Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

Now that the votes are in, it would be interesting to know the motives of you who didn't vote.

(For some reason I assume you still vote here on this poll... not very logical, is it :D ?)

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

From my understanding, you need karma on maemo.org to get an invitation to vote.
No maemo.org karma = no email informing you of the vote in the first place.

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

well, the interesting question is why those who do have enough karma and did receive an invitation still didn't vote...

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

Reason for not voting: I'm physically ~6000 miles away from the computer that has the email of voting credentials. Does that count as good excuse? :) (Yeah.... I could have saved the data on my tablet or laptop before I left but I didn't felt that so important... :o)

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

+1

***

When I first got involved with this community after purchasing my N800 in January of 07. Maemo org was in a dismal state. The relationship between the garage and the org site was not readily apparent and the web sites were in disrepair. About the only stable resource for a newbie like myself was this forum.

Out of frustration I have stuck with what works and wait patiently for new information to make its way to this "ghetto" as it has been called. I suppose this ghetto is my "comfort zone".

Since then I'm sure changes for the better have been made to maemo.org, et al however, because of the time I waisted initially trying to parse newbie info out of Maemo.org or even just connect, it will take some time before I feel comfortable interacting with it again.

I do understand that soon I will have no choice. :eek:

Oh... and as far as Karma goes... I have become quite adept at using my tablet. Along the way I have gained some knowledge that I try to pass along in my replies on this forum. Since this forum has been my No. 1 source of information for these endeavors, the only "Karma" that means anything to me is a members participation on this forum. :)

This is MHO, and it may or may not reflect the opinions of others...

... nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna...

:D

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

Is it possible that people with large amounts of Karma are not inclined to vote for a Community Council?

For instance, say a hypothetical application developer has 2500 Karma points based upon their ITT posts about their application, downloads, thanks, etc. This person has developed a community of their own, and is probably pretty focused on their own goals, objectives, commitments to users, etc. It is possible that such a person may not be inclined to vote in such an election, simply because they see no need for a Council, they would not benefit from one, it doesn't serve their interests, they have no time to vote, etc.

I guess, by extension, such a scenario is almost ironic. This person has done so much for the community that they are elibigle to vote, but at the same time, are not able to or are unwilling to, since they perceive that it doesn't benefit them directly. The system which choses the electorate may have a (large) built-in apathy factor. Just a thought.

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

Hello, GMail.

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

Yeah... if it was sent to gmail account. It was plain simple POP3 mail account. (I'm kind of old fashioned in that sense...)

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

Yeah, that's my point. :p

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

I didn't know about it, guess I'm too new.

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

Last time I voted so that a bitter, hostile, elitist, rude & insulting person wouldn't make it into the council as a representative of the community.

So this time I didn't even bother.

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

Other: as in I don't recall receiving an e-mail for it.

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

(i hope i wasn't supposed to pick just one, because i picked 3.)

other = i don't have any clue as to what criteria i might use to pick people, because i don't have any clue as to the function of the council. (i was not aware that such a council existed until i received an invitation to vote.)

[reading http://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Community_Council... 100% done.]

i think the primary criterion i would use is the frequency with which someone visits this forum and the forum at maemo.org* and reads posts. posting frequency would be secondary, and listening/understanding with an open yet critical mind would be tertiary. i think #1 is logged in some form or another, but i don't think i have access to the data... #2 is pretty easily observed... #3 is difficult to assess online... eh, i would've voted for qole and GA anyway.

*side note: i'm a frequent visitor to this forum but never visit the maemo.org forum because it's not nearly as active.

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

:D that's exactly what i thought would be necessary: probably most people have more than one reason.
i still don't fully understand the role of the council... and i remember that this (among other reasons) almost kept me from voting the first time.

this time it was different, i had a set of categories and i voted for each person separately in each category. what's very interesting for me is that my categories don't match yours at all... which probably is because we both don't have a clear understanding of how a perfect council member should be. ;)
Just for comparison, here's what I had:

1. Sympathy. Do I like the person? Some get a strong yes here, others get a no, but I found I felt indifferent about most people. (To be honest, some people got points in the sympathy category just because they looked nice on the pictures. Who says sympathy is something objective :D ?)
2. Style in the forum. Are they helpful to new members? Do they have a good sense of humor (=mine)? Do they contribute to discussions in a constructive manner?
3. Software released. I like "hands on"-guys, coders, people who know about the platform from their own experiences.
4. Ideology. I'm a "free software" person. I live for ideologies, not only in the software world but generally. Marketing guys and pragmatists are my natural enemies. It's difficult to find this out about the candidates, but some of them gave clues, if only in the words they used.
5. Help points. Some of the candidates were exceptionally helpful when I needed support. I remember such things.

1 and 2 were most important to me.

I don't know if this is the proper way or if these are criteria anybody would agree upon for selecting council members (probably not). But who cares? People who earn points in all of these categories earn my trust and deserve my vote.

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

I thanked you because I'm pretty sure I got elected by votes from people like you.

I'm not thanking you for your vote, because I'm not entirely pleased to be on the Council*, but I'm thanking you because you proved me right that people are (1) voting without a clear understanding of what the Council does and (2) voting for people they know and see as helpful community members.

You can't have an election platform ("If you elect me, I promise to do nunna nunna**") without an understanding of what issues and responsibilities fall within the scope of the governing body being elected.

*mostly because I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing as a councilor.

** ... nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna ...

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

You too? :D

I was absolutely positive last time that I wouldn't vote (for several reasons: not knowing what the council should be good for, thus not knowing how to decide which candidate would be best, finally not knowing the candidates too well...). Then Benson wrote:
This made me vote against somebody instead of for somebody. I actually can't even remember who I voted for. It's all Benson's fault.;)
I share your frustration. Sometimes you wonder, don't you? But still: If I remember correctly (I don't have the figures at hand now), only ~160 people voted this time. You'll hardly find elections where your personal vote can make such a difference. You should have voted again. And again next time. Your conviction isn't wrong only because others don't share it.

Oh, and as a sidenote about him:
He almost made me leave this community for good last November. I thought: WTF? I wouldn't listen to, let alone talk to such a person in real life if I had to, for sake sake of my sanity and health. Why should I voluntarily come to a place where he's so omnipresent? I got angry each day about his insults and I had already decided I'd simply do myself a favor and leave the community.... when I discovered the ignore function. Now all I see is "This message is hidden...."
internettablettalk.com is a much better place now, as friendly as a community should be. :cool:

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

Actually, I had a good candidate, someone who was really helpful, friendly, and was clearly working hard to actually promote development of the tablets. So my last vote was dual-purpose.

Shame that this is the face of the community. Newbies don't know this feature, and yet they're subjected to it. Enough said, though.

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

So...


...your constituency has now defined your platform. Your logic would suggest that a good deal of your votes came from folks who know you from this forum.

Then your purpose on the council, young grasshopper, would be to help the community through this forum. Sort of this forums council liaison, if you will.

... nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna nunna ...


BTW, part of my first response in this thread could have just as easily been posted in your "De-frag" thread. :cool:

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

Thanks. That's actually a very insightful comment. I think that's what I'll do. I will fight for the downtrodden members of the ITT ghetto!

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

I guess I never really thought to setup an account on maemo.org I'm not sure there really is much need to login to the site for most users and the login button is about as small as possible.

It's not exactly obvious that you can log in even. I seriously never saw the login link until I read this and went looking for it.

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

My opinion is that Maemo is run by a coalition of people I disagree with, and voting wouldn't make a difference. Also, it would amount to an endorsement of the current system, which I don't endorse.

In a political system like the US, you can be in the minority and work to build support for your group, taking years if necessary. In a small system like this, you really don't have a chance.

I was in SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) a while back. It was run by a Maoist wing of Communists when I belonged. Opposing them was hopeless; they showed up for every meeting and outorganized everyone. Whenever there was a controversy, they decided what the rules were, and the rules were always in their favor.

This is not as extreme, or as important, but it seems similar to me.

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

Don't have the necessary bits and pieces required on maemo.org to vote (such as a login etc..) Unless you are a dev, not sure at this time what that brings to the table for common or garden users like myself, may change when the forums move over though.

Im fairly familar, and have read lots of posts by 4 of the 5 who have been elected, and actually am quite content with the result, especially Jaffa, who is a Brit as well, and seems a top bloke (you would have had my vote).

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

Cool! You could be our own slum dog millionaire... do we need a choreographer then?

***

Seriously though... I don't think it is so much of a fight as it is an awareness and presence.

With a more user friendly device on the horizon, it's conceivable that many more people will interact with all things Maemo via the forums (and only the forums). As a result, other maemo.org channels may become more isolated and viewed by some as elitist... More frag.

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

The running of "Maemo" (the platform, the maemo.org website, Maemo Software team in Nokia?) is not something the council does. The primary role of the council (and I'll be raising this in qole's thread on maemo-community when I get a chance) is to represent the views and opinions of the Maemo Community (which includes anyone sufficiently enfranchised to discuss things on ITT, rank downloads on maemo.org, developers, power users, bloggers etc.) to Nokia, and vice versa.

On a practical level, this includes highlighting things like "x, y and z would be possible if Nokia did a & b, and here's why that's useful to Nokia and the community"; as well as recruiting for roles like the debmaster to aid in the quality and quantity of software in the maemo.org Extras repository.

It;s in the community's interest to get that repo enabled on devices wherever possible (and it's shipping with devices, but disabled at the moment), as this ensures that application authors are getting the widest possible audience.

You don't need to be a developer to either contribute to, or gain value from, maemo.org. For example:

• Helping triage bugs, or voting and commenting on them.
• Organise and contribute to the wiki, or use much of the useful information on there.
• Finding new applications to download and commenting and ranking on them.
• Keeping track of what's going on in the community through news and, more specifically, the planet blog aggregation.

Doing any of these things will also raise you karma points which, ultimately, will help contribute to things like any future device programmes - or sponsored travel. Concrete advantages to actively participating a lot in the community, but there are benefits to you (particular bugs or enhancements being fixed and new applications to use on your tablet) even if you aren't that prolific.

Ta muchly :-)

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

Jaffa, that should be in your signature: "Maemo Community Council Top Bloke".

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

And, whether members of itT are members of maemo.org or not, know that the Council has (and will always) be advocates for the important discussions that happen here -- be it called internettablettalk.com or talk.maemo.org. So, even if you've never been to maemo.org, we (the Council) never cared -- it's the users and the platform that we care about, regardless of where everyone "hangs out." This being said, I really do wish that more people had voted.

Case-in-point: Me. I haven't written a line of code for Maemo...ever. But, I'm in my second term of Councilhood, I was sponsored for Maemo Summit 2008, I was accepted into the N810 developer program (and even received a second, free N810 for some bug testing I did for that program), etc.

Volunteering for -- and impacting -- Maemo is not all about writing code, or even being tech savvy. If you own a Maemo device, you can participate.

And, I know it's probably been said here before, but... Even if you never go to maemo.org, having an account there -- with your itT info added to your maemo.org profile -- will accumulate karma just by your participating here on itT (itT Thanks are tallied in the maemo.org karma count).

Tim

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

OK, seems about 50 people voted here so far. Of those who did not vote for the community council, a majority of 55% said either "What's the council good for, anyway?" (29,6%) and/or "I don't know all these people" (25%).

While this is not representative, it seems likely. Not knowing what the council's good for... There's even a thread about this on the community mailing list right now. I couldn't really explain the role of the council if somebody asked.
Not knowing the candidates: While I come to both ITT and maemo.org almost daily to look for news, I only knew 4 out of 9 candidates well enough to make any decision right away. I didn't want to be unfair to the others, so I went to their profile pages on maemo.org, searched for their posts on ITT (if they had any), read their blogs/homepages/... to gather information and then compared it to those I knew.

So the bottom line could be:
If we want more people to vote, we need to better define what the council does and the candidates themselves should not be shy about "campaigning" (meaning: introducing themselves to the public). Nobody, even those with a high karma, can expect to be known.

My personal problem understanding the role of the council ATM is:
Council members are active community members. I see a lot of activity driven by council members. Still I can't tell if this is because they are members of the council, because the council as a body exists, or if it is because they're just devoted to Maemo and would have done what they did, anyway.

I could explain the role of the council better if I knew: This, this and this was done as a work of the council. It wouldn't have happened if the single members, even though each active and devoted, hadn't been organized in the structure they defined within the council.
Just an idea...

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

I dunno, to me it sounded simple enough : Nokia has been learning how open source projects work, through trial and error, since it launched the 770 in 2005.

It now understands that it needs an active and lively community to support the tablets, and is ready to listen more, to interface more, and provide means & funds (the summit, maemo.org and ITT, the debmaster etc.).

It just can't/won't interact with hundred of individuals with conflicting views, so we have a Council of community members, elected by the community, who have the ear of Nokia's maemo team and are entrusted with the best use of whatever means Nokia endows the community with.

Is this too much of a simplification ? Am I missing something essential ?...

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

a) It's a little too abstract for me. I can't base a decision in an election on "... entrusted with the best use of whatever means Nokia endows the community with". (Although this one sentence somehow fits my view of he council role.)
b) It contradicts what I believe (dont ask me when and where) has been said about the role of the council: that it is not a representative body and will not make decisions about Maemo together with Nokia. If it were, we as those who vote should better know what Nokia and the council talk about when the council members "have the ear of Nokia's Maemo team" and how these talks affect Maemo as a project.

My somewhat blurry picture of the council is that it provides a structure for those who want to work for the benefit of the community, a structure to organize their work and better coordinate their efforts. (Which, of course, means that being a council members brings you more work rather than more power.)

But, again... Look at the mailing list. Council members themselves aren't absolutely sure of their roles. Why should I? ;)

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

The bottom line: The Maemo Community Council represents practically nobody except a bunch of programmers, and a few power users. When you compare that group to the number of people who have bought tablets, you get basically zilch.

It is a very important council, since those programmers are in many ways the lifeblood of the tablets. However, from the point of view of a user, the council doesn't mean much, not if you're a user who just wants to read Word docs on the tablet, or one of the other typical interests of the primary tablet purchasers.

What concerns me is that any rise in influence of the Maemo Community is likely to diminish the already miniscule influence of the users. The migration of this user-centered site to the Maemo whatever may be the death knell to the tablets. We'll see if that is true. Remember all those users who were chased away because they didn't SEARCH enough? We may come to miss them, eventually.

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

Ohh, Geneven, I think that's a bit harsh.

When nokia were developing the tablets, they took decisions such as not including a PIM, or word document reading functionality. Both features are present in S60 phones as default, and both features have been heavily critisised by users since.

My impression is that with Maemo.org, and the council, Nokia are trying to encourage user involvement, and feedback in a controlled manner that Nokia can cope with, and listening to any of your users, be they Developers, or Power Users, or Normal Users is a good thing, and should be encouraged.

What should happen is that people like you and I, who are active users and participants, should help steer and influence the council members.

I now have a maemo.org account BTW, and will try and garner enough brownie points to be able to vote in future.

Gaz

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

If you've linked in your iTT account by entering the proper information in your profile on maemo.org, then I think you'll find after the karma calculator next runs that you have already earned more than enough karma to vote.

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

Nokia isn't the one who came up with and implemented the council, the community is. maemo.org and the council are by the community, for the community, of the community.

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

Yes, a few enthusiasts have way more influence than the people out there purchasing the hardware to the tune of millions of dollars.

You keep making inaccurate statements like these and I keep trying to correct you (to, apparently, no effect). It's this flawed view of the situation that largely invalidates most of your arguments.

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

If I'm wrong, I'm happy. We'll see what happens.

The fact that this site is migrating is not true? That's great! The fact that this is a user-centered site is true, I guess.

The fact that the Maemo site is programmer-centered is not true? I think it is true. You say it is changing. I say, no fair taking credit for a change that has not happened.

For example, the Wiki that you have put together so helpfully, specifies that it is mainly for advanced users. Presumably there is another Wiki in the wings that will cure all such ills.

The POSSIBILITY that the planned changes may be the death knell to the tablets CANNOT be contradicted -- unless you have a crystal ball. No one knows the future, even me.

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

There's an argument that can't be used to support saying anything. . . . .

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

If it is true that Maemo is converting from a developer-centric website to an end-user one, then I think this page needs a serious rewrite. Specifically this line:

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

Maemo isn't a website, Maemo is a software platform. maemo.org is the website.

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

But it's true that Planet Maemo needs to be re-thought to address the new situation. This is worth a new thread for discussion.

Re: Maemo Community Council: Why didn't you vote?
 

They call that "being understood".

Additionally, the name of the website is maemo, .org is a generic top level domain that indicates the maemo website is an organization.

Stop splitting hairs. It only makes one of us look like a fool, and it's not me.