Open letter to the Maemo community
 

I've been struggling with how I needed to approach this, and "need" is the operative word. I realize I'm just a peon in a sea of peons but I believe the observations I'm about to share are important for the future of this community (although not necessarily for the software platform or devices).

As many recall I got a little stressed after Nokia eliminated my position. I was looking to redefine my role here and stumbled when faced with some surprising opposition to a project.

I only mention that because the episode made me realize I needed to focus on more important matters and so ITT faded into the back of my brain although I certainly missed the daily exchanges with you guys.

But this isn't about me.

Rather, it's about something I find disturbing now that I've returned. A polarization in this community, following a similar polarization in the council. And not for the good, either. And it's growing. Like a cancer.

Now, that sort of thing happens. That's why we have (grumble) democrats and republicans here in the US. And anyone watching the current partisan sniping in my homeland knows how ugly that can get.

Sadly, I'm seeing that same sort of ugliness in this virtual microsociety. A large part of it is due to drastic changes and growth pains. Hard to avoid the consequences of such. But from what I see the biggest driving factor is ego.

I want to mention names but I'm going to refrain. Anyone can follow discussions, note the pattern of Thanks, and see for themselves who and what I'm talking about. And I see one individual "thanking both sides of the fence" so I see him as an erstwhile peacemaker and not a cause of any ugliness.

I'm being intentionally obtuse because I want to elevate the discussion far above the muck in which it has heretofore wallowed. I want the petty sniping to stop, the sarcasm to stop, the one-upmanship to stop. I want us all to take deep breaths and remember we are mature adults. And that goes double for anyone who is purporting to represent this community. When you're in a position of leadership people naturally expect more from you. If you have discomfort with that, then I respectfully suggest that representation is not for you... much like it apparently is not for many of the representatives in US government.

Now, I'm not here to preach and then retreat into abject hypocrisy. I intend to walk the walk. But I think it's high time every single one of us examine our motives and ask some hard questions of ourselves. What are we hoping to accomplish here? What good is all the chest bumping? Do we want a cohesive community or a splintered one?

We're developing the latter. Either we stop it now or it becomes a deadly cancer.

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

In the States we do have the ability to impeach ... I'm sure all the council members have something to contribute; I'd like to think that's how they got there. BUT - having been in the software bus a while I can say that some of the most brilliant coders and engineers I knew should never - ever! be put in a public facing position.

And it's not really because of what they would say or whether they were right or wrong ( usually right ) but HOW they would say it. I guess all the smarts took up all the room for tact and diplomacy.

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

I have to say, as someone who has been using my tablet daily for over a year and visits the forums daily (yet often refrains from posting due to laziness but also the petty crap mentioned), we should all remember that we're trying to enjoy and improve our little community (maemo) wich is in itself a very small fraction of a pretty small community in itself (linux).

Sometimes it's funny to read all of the drama, but mostly I'll stick to enjoying the great apps that dedicated community members have given us (canola, console-tools, liqbase, easy-debian, and mer, to name a few)

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

I am not an adult. ;)


Personally, by here I assume talk.maemo.org, I am just trying to squeeze the most out of my tablet, have some fun, and help and learn from the great community. I agree with nemo, while some people like to be drama queens, the community as a whole is still great!

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

You conduct yourself here like an adult, which is the point. ;)

And yes the community as a whole is great. But even small schisms need to be addressed BEFORE they become canyons.

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

I want nothing more than to help make this a better community. I feel however lately there has been a lot of issues, which is why I started becoming more vocal. I just wanted to point out there is some confusion in some processes. There could be some better lines of communication. Changes that affect the entire community should be raised to higher visibility and attempts should be made to get more people involved.

To me these were all good things, that the community council should support and try to address. Some integration of the mailing list/forum and the SSO will address some of these issues. But was I told hey here is what we think we can do to solve these PROBLEMS? I was told there was no problem, I was crazy, and I was the only one that was confused.

I do not know what your issue with council is, but I think council needs to represent the ENTIRE community and ALWAYS do its best to get/keep everyone involved.

I guess thats just the rebel in me!

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

You know that whenever penguinbait and I are thanking each other's posts that either the world is ending or there's something profound going on.

YMMV. :D

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

Nice post, well stated.

I think we could all use a new device and new OS release, or perhaps some cold beer (sorry if this offends any warm beer people) and karaoke!

Cheers!

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

As a consumer, I found this place by mere accident; and by far, it's proven itself to be the leader - so much so that Maemo absorbed it.

I've learned the in and outs of my 770 and my N810, while waiting patiently for Android or Mer to be easily installed (FIASCO image perhaps) on the 770, and reading about the upcoming N900; I've started to spend less and less time here simply due to a perceived shift in focus from community first to ego first.

And sadly, I like this community. A lot. Enough to have issues with parts of it being extremely negative; meanwhile I still moderate/add to a community of some 600k users at Flashkit.com since I'm a Flex/Flash dev - and my needs for the tablets are rather esoteric compared to most people here.

However, the community, I think will "sort" itself out. In my 9 years as a super moderator at FK, I've seen trends and egos come and go.

Just wished that things were not as separated as I perceive now though. But that's my 2 cents... which given the current inflation and deficit is worth only .037 cents by the time you've finished reading this.

Best of luck to talk.maemo, nee ITT.

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

what? there are problems? You mean some of my thanks were unearned?

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

Cold beer? It's things like this that are tearing this community apart! How dare you?!?

(I kid, I kid)

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

My main gripe lately is that constructive criticism from members is too often immediately met with unnecessary insults, sarcasm, and verbiage intended to stifle further exploration of the critical subject. When other members of the rank and file do this, it's par for the course-- but when it comes from leadership of any sort, it's perceived as bearing the stamp of authority. That's got to stop. Course correction IS often required, but there are many better ways of doing it than slamming people or their opinions.

I was once selected as a founding member of one company's global diversity council. Silly me, I assumed that meant they saw I already had all the tools required for such a role. Instead, there was relationship management training for all of us. Some of my co-workers scoffed and mocked this, but then, they didn't attend and witness the benefits. I've learned from every single such class, even if it meant RElearning something that in my human stupidity I had gotten away from. The point is that I would submit that ANY community leader should look into this sort of training. Perhaps there's even a free, online course that the Maemo council could attend?

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

It almost, to me, seems that the Maemo Community Council has polarized the community. To my understanding, the council is supposed to represent us to Nokia but it almost seems quite the other way around.

Because council voting has been so extremely low -- and only representative of a small segment of the community -- it seems that the biggest Maemo/maemo enthusiasts have been elected.

And this will not change when voting totals are in the 3-digit range. Do the people with the loudest voices already, need a megaphone?

And don't tell me to vote to get someone else elected; because since it seems only long-term die-hard Maemo supporters vote, what's the point (and, I did vote)?

That is not to say that the council hasn't been involved in things that has helped this community; I know they're work is behind the scenes and I'm sure they've helped us in many ways.

The major problem is, is every time there is a dissenter, someone who wants to complain -- justly or not -- it seems like a council member always responds to this and three others give Thanks. This cultivates an us against them mentality, which is the exact opposite of what should happen.

In addition to that, even when someone raises a valid point, if they typed Maemo.org with an uppercase M, or Freemantle with two ee's, they are almost immediately scolded by a council member. Is this a joke?

To me, the whole system is broken.

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

The first couple of days of having my N800 I thought to myself "wow, self, it would be great if we could rotate the screen into portrait mode" and I checked the forum.

Sure enough, there was a huuuuge thread going with instructions on how to do just that (these were pre Advanced Backlight-Rotation days).

It seemed like damn near all of the "loudest voices" mentioned above were there...helping. It seemed (at least to relative stranger) that anybody knowledgable in the community in any was working together to get rotation not just accomplished, but easliy accomplished.

And that was my first real introduction to the community. I thought, damn, these people are awesome!

But over time that public cooperation seems to have faded away a bit.

Maybe the problem is that the Council is too busy doing things behind the scenes? I dunno, I don't really pay too close attention to the council or the politics, as I've said.

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

That is exactly what I was talking about.

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

Meh, i think its more that things are in a creative limbo. We know some things about the internals of the future device, we have the fremantle sdk releases, but in the end people have slowed down their development projects related to diablo, maybe retooling them for fremantle, maybe just assuming a wait and see attitude while nokia get things cleaned up for the release.

For those of us that are more users then developers, this slowdown can be somewhat discomforting, as one may have grown accustomed to seeing the updates list in app manager filled up each week with updates to ones often used programs.

And so idle minds starts asking questions and speculating about whats going on...

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

I too came here and was impressed with the cooperation and helpfulness. There were (as there always are) some that come across as less than helpful. On the whole, a very positive place.

With the recent changes, that were perhaps poorly communicated it seems that the tone has changed. Like Textrat, I thought about saying something about it. I even started a draft or two. However, I would visit the forum, read some threads, and shake my head. Mostly feeling that my effort would be lost on those that could most benefit, I have seen and participated in other online communities that no longer survive due to a few people putting their desires above the communities.

Instead, I thought it best to get as many people voting as possible. The theory being that the more people that voted, the more likely the next council would represent the community better (whether or not I personally agree). That said, anyone concerned who hasn't signed up for voting should see the link in my sig or look in the maemo.org section for the sticky on voting.

Hopefully, a new device will be forthcoming sooner rather than later and bring this community back together again. The longer we go, the more divided I see this community becoming as ego is placed ahead of the community.

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

In my opinion the first step is this: stifle the trolls, NOT the contributors.

One thing about parenthood is that it provides one with the great opportunity to eat a lot of humble pie. By this I mean listening to ourselves lecturing our kids and realizing we, too, have a lot to learn. In my case that was in the area of instant rebuttals, a bad habit of mine. My youngest son developed the same bad habit and I had to face the "demon inside myself". So last year I started down that path of self-correction so he could better avoid the path of self-destruction.

So that's where I'm coming from. And I'm not even saying "do as I do". I'm saying we all have a tendency to let ego get the better of our innate humanity and that admitting this is the first step toward better relations with others.

I see the instant rebuttal reflex as a HUGE problem here in that it comes across as a slap to posters. I would caution council members especially to flip the conversation around before they commit to that Post Quick Reply button, and consider how it would come across to them.

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

You reversed the inputs when you put together your link. The text shows the URL and when you click it it brings you to "here", that is, to http://here/.

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

I now use the "Report this" function regardless of whether the post was from a moderator, Council Member, or Joe Nokia his own dang self. :)

I put what my response would have been in the provided text box and hit submit... It may be just the placebo effect but it at least gives me the satisfaction of responding without subjecting the entire membership to my half of the crap that a threaded response would produce.


I know that is hard to do sometimes, particularly when the offending post ends with what appears to be an insult or raises questions about your motivation, level of intelligence, sanity, or legitimate parentage…

What is most frustrating is when the post also avoids a direct question or sends a productive thread into the dumper and by doing so avoids the original topic all together.

...and that's the rub.
If the offending post goes unchecked it remains in the threaded conversation like an un-flushed turd in a toilet bowl. Turds tend to stink up a place IMHO.

@all… http://www.clicksmilies.com/auswahl/ernaehrung004.gif http://www.clicksmilies.com/s1106/mu...smiley-026.gif http://www.clicksmilies.com/s1106/pa...smiley-018.gif bon week-end

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

To me, the basic problem is that, thru an election that I think was basically illegitimate, a group acquired a huge influence over what happens here. They don't deserve the influence, and this creates a "love it or leave it" situation.

My impression is that a lot of people are choosing to leave it. Most of the heroes, such as Texrat and Penguinbait, are still here, but as their influence wanes, this becomes a less and less comfortable place to frequent.

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

And the question in, and/or point of, the post is totally ignored by said council member.

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

Good points YoDude.

The other big help in my growth recently was working in a global customer-support capacity for Nokia the last year or so I was there. I had never been in such a capacity before and had a LOT to learn.

Problem was, I started off supporting 400 or so people all across the planet, indirectly managing about 50. I had never directed more than 12 at a time, and those were in person.

Right off the bat I screwed up and got on the bad side of many claims handlers. I had a bad habit of quoting policy when any issue arose, and that didn't earn me any friends.

I had to learn the hard way after a performance review to completely change my approach. I realized these people just wanted to do their jobs, too, and didn't have any more time than I did to fight the system. So I changed the first line of my emails from a robotic:

to an empathetic:

The difference was night and day. Even my boss noticed. I went from him doubting I could get the cooperation I needed (no one had before) to gaining the trust of almost every single user. They started sending me gifts (through him at times) and greeting me enthusastically the rare times I got to meet any of them. Made my work sooo much easier and more rewarding.

All they wanted was someone to listen without judgment.

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

I say we bring this to the maemo community supreme court. If we don't have one of those yet, I nominate myself for one of the Justice positions! ;)

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

Mullf thanks for pointing that out. I did it when the site first switched themes, I was using minimal and didn't notice. Boy am I embarassed. At least the link was right. All corrected.

*And this is just an example of the helpfulness that kept me here once I found the forum.

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

Bump...

It's been a few hours since the last post, but I think this thread deserves more attention (and time in the "Active Topics" bar). A huge thanks to Texrat for starting the ball rolling. Sorry if the following rambles a bit, but so it goes...

I personally LOVE the idea of this thread. I've been following the NITs since the 770 - got one of the first developer devices, and have had a love/hate relationship ever since. For the past four years I've been waiting patiently to create a port of Audacity (audio editor) for the NIT, which is still not possible due to a combination of hardware/software issues. Hopefully the new hardware/software will solve this, but I'll believe it when I see it (in my hands).

Some members have been great in discussing things with me, while others... well, I don't have a computer science degree, and this is sometimes a problem. You see, I'm "a newbie" (I HATE that term) when it comes to programming, but not when it comes to music/audio. And because I don't tend to think like a programmer (whatever that means), many of my ideas get dismissed out of hand. Yet, after a dozen years of university, numerous degrees, and well over 100 audio recording projects, I'm quite confident in my understanding of the material. I may not know/care about programming, but I _get_ what the users need.

So here's the problem: I want to contribute to the community, but I'm not convinced the community wants me. Instead of watching things become more open, allowing me to actually get on with my ideas, I've seen a wide range of tools emerge for the programmers and not much come for the other users. And when I've raised this point in the past, I have always been summarily dismissed. Sadly, these harsh words have almost always come from one "leader" or another.

At this point, I'm keeping myself busy with the occasional bug report, and I'd love to contribute some system sounds to the NIT. But the environment here is so hostile at times that I default back to more gentle options (like installing a bathroom fan while sitting in the attic, in fibreglass, for 5 hours).

My question, I suppose, is this: is Maemo becoming a more programmer-specific project? If this is the case, I'll cut my losses and move on. If there is a plan to engage and embrace new users of all stripes, I'll continue to purchase &/or suggest NITs for my family, friends, students, etc. I appreciate a community approach as much as anyone, but can someone please tell me where the h#%* we're going?

And Texrat, PM me if you want to discuss ways to tweak your bluegrass vocals. I've got the tools...

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

So, I haven't posted on here in a while. The only reason I came back to this board was to sell my N800. It was basically lying untouched as I refused to come back to this board for this exact reason, and as the device is such a DIY piece of kit I had ultimately alienated myself from the only source of new information / updates (outside the download link on maemo.org) for the machine.

I am a computer guy. I do sysadmin work. I am fine with a bit of computer work to get things working, but the feeling I got from here was that if I was not planning on getting more than waist deep in Maemo I should not open my mouth. So, I stopped.

I sold my N800 to a friend who asked if there were any resources to figure out how to use it better. They are not computer people. I told them to ask me if they had any problems. There was no way I was sending them to this board / place to ask questions.

Being one of the more computer literate friends in my groups I often get asked for gadget recommendations. I have, a handful of times, not recommended an NIT because the end user would have to come here for support, and that was simply not going to work in a real world environment.

I have been on boards before and done the back and forth with power groups and the "in" crowd, etc. That doesn't bother me. What bothers me is that this group and this board IS the customer service point (software wise) for a real product. The people and views here (to the layman) ARE the word from Nokia on how to use the NIT. We can argue why (technically) this SHOULDN'T be perceived this way till we are all blue in the (digital) face, but for the bulk of those buying a product if you constantly point them to a place, then the people running it MUST be the people in charge.

I am a fan of open source, and for the most part I have had a pleasant experience with other projects, but my time on this board was enough to not only stop using my product but to also suggest others find alternatives. I just feel that the worst move Nokia made was letting this board suffice for customer service. It's fine as a technical sounding board (and I think a TON of good work has come from those participating here) but utterly horrible as a landing spot for the average end user.

*edit: cleaned up quote used.

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

Wow. Pretty hard there. I have to say that I think the forums are generally useful. I don't get involved with the BS, but I understand here this person is coming from since i've seen really rude behavior directed at people asking basic questions. It particularly disturbs me when people are directed to threads with 50+ pages to find a single post. I have to agree though that if I gave one of these tablets to a total noob I would be very concerned with them coming here.

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

No.

• Each Maemo device has been targeted at a more "mainstream" audience than the one that preceded it.* The Maemo 5 devices should, if anything, be a greater step toward that goal than any before. Whether they're the fabled "Step 5" or not isn't clear, and also isn't important.
• During a recession that has led to cutbacks in other areas, Nokia has increased hiring for Maemo in preparation for the platform taking on far greater importance within the company's product line up.
• Last year's Maemo Summit was mostly aimed at programmers. Maemo Summit 2009 will feature a track for "engaged users".
• Nokia has increased financial support for maemo.org. They've paid for a Debmaster and begun supporting Talk.
• A certain "engaged user" of distinction, who also happens to have insider knowledge of Maemo's future, did his best--based upon experience in building online communities--to restructure Talk to better serve the anticipated influx of new Maemo users.
• Nokia will be opening a new web site for casual users of Maemo devices. This site is expected to be a considerable improvement over Tableteer and the OS2008 User Site.

And the list goes on.

So, the balance of the maemo.org community will continue to shift from developers to engaged users, with a growing number of casual users, on the Maemo users' site, also benefiting from Extras, syndicated Downloads data, etc. Meanwhile, I hope you, and everyone else on this site, continue to feel welcome. Indeed, I hope we're able to become more welcoming.


* The N810 WiMAX Edition was, as its name implies, a variant of the N810, not a real step forward toward mainstream.

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

This is an innate problem with small communities that have elected bodies.

I used to serve on the committee of a local pressure/support group (nothing to do with technology BTW) and the elections were basically just the same dozen people voting for each other. The total group membership was maybe 200 but only a tiny proportion bothered to vote.

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

Small groups that are basically just being organized usually start with mass meetings, and the officers are chosen by almost 100% of the members, because the voters are all the people present at the meetings.

After the group is organized, then it's true that percentage of people voting can be small.

I don't think that ITT/Maemo ever went thru the "we're just getting started, everybody vote" stage.

The correct procedure from a political organizational point of view, I think, would have been to have the elections on ITT, not Maemo, and to allow 100% of the registered users to vote on representatives without taking any further action.

That would at any rate have avoided my comments about "Maemo is taking over," which was very upsetting because of the capitalization problem.

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

I think the maemo community council was a good idea, in theory. However, looking at the council page, it is what it says it is: the maemo (maemo.org) community council, ran through, and voted on by members of maemo.org. Which until recently did not include ITT. Although you could earn the required karma through ITT, which is about the only way to get voting privledges unless you are a developer.

I would point out that currently, there are still separate logins to talk and maemo.org. So although council members and others have claimed that a talk login will suffice for part of the voting requirements, the only sure way is to have a maemo.org login linked to a talk.maemo.org profile to earn the required karma.

I have suggested that this should be specifically addressed before the next election. I was told that my comments were off topic (arguably) or that I should direct my energies to helping with SSO (single sign on) which at the time was not even considering talk as a login to be included.

My thought being that until efforts are made to include the talk forum specifically, the council will continue to be the maemo.org community council, not the Maemo community council.

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

I definitely wish we'd had single sign on and a combined user base before the first election. However, I disagree that karma earning is limited mostly to Talk/iTT posts/thanks and application development. The karma page in the wiki lists a number of other options.

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

Following Texrat's trend of explaining real life experiences:

I'm the father of two little kids. They are lovely and they enjoy so much playing with each other and with their parents... except when they fight. And they fight quite regularly, actually.

The reasons for a fight can be many if you look at the surface: he is breaking the lego tower I just finished, he took my sword and ran away, he took and ate my piece of bread / no you gave it to me... and so on.

Actually the root reasons are basically two most of the times: they are hungry or they are tired or (worse) both.

The Maemo community is hungry of new hardware and fresh software. All you mention past times of community help and collaboration. Well, those were times when you all were busy with new stuff.

And a noticeable % of the most vocal guys of this community seem to be quite tired about certain things, and certain people. Because, let's not forget, all this "polarism" (as Texrat puts it) can be reduced to the discussions of a dozen of posters with hundreds/thousands of posts each.

The solution for hunger is coming and you don't need to blame yourselves since no Council or no Alternatives will change the dates.

The solution for tiredness however is all in the side of these bunch of veteran posters (and yes I take my piece of cake). Texrat put it well: give a rest to the Quick Reply button. Don't play ping pong, don't try to have the last word. You have exchanged already hundreds of posts between yourselves that are of little interest out of that elite of top posters.

If there is something you find hostile, upsetting, infuriating... the Maemo community probably doesn't need another Quick Reply about it from you right now. Give it a rest, move forward and make something more satisfying out of your time. If the next morning you still care about that post, have a look at it. Most probably someone else will have continued the thread and now the things will be settling.

And also very important: all these top posters have the best intentions with newcomers. However, the best favor someone can do to a newcomer is... provide her a good atmosphere to land and leave him time and space to have her own say. Chains of Quick Replies from the usual suspects arguing each other definitely don't help feeling anybody comfortable here.

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

And now about the couple of topics that seem to be more controversial: Council and ITt merge. It's also unsurprising that they create friction now in the early stages since they belong to something humans use to fight about: power and territory. Or better said: different opinions about power and territory.

About the Council, I personally think that most people is giving too much importance to it. I really wonder why. It seems almost a paradox that the ones less happy about the Council seem to be the ones "giving" more powers to it. However, most topics can be discussed, agreed, and executed without needing any Council at all. Just like before the Council existed.

It may also be that a % of blame Nokia became before is now redirected to them. But still I wonder what is it there to blame. What is the Council doing that is so upsetting? Actually... what is the Council TEAM doing?

It looks like there is a confusion between "the Council" (a team of elected members) and "Council members" (5 individuals that were active in the community and keep being active now). Question to yourself: has your opinion changed lately about Jaffa, GeneralAntilles, timsamoff, Kees or qole? Let me guess most answers from those top posters: no. The fact that these people are now council members have accentuated your previous opinion (good->better, bad->worse), but the existance of the Council itself is not the root of the (quite personal actually?) problems. Those problems, quite normal in any place where humans spend a lot of time together, actually originated in those times of happy community help and collaboration - but they were mostly covered because there was fresh food to fight hunger and plenty of multidirectional discussion to avoid tiredness among the usual suspects.

About the ITt merge, it's all about territory IMO. It's understandable that frictions appear and they usually get sorted out over time. What I don't understand is this feeling of "loosing power" with the merge. What is exactly the power that an ITt member could exercise before (under the highly appreciated and never contested benevolent dictator Reggie) and now (with the same Reggie for Talk + an alignement with the now community driven maemo-org, an alignement Reggie agrees with and helps consolidating)?

I would say that the average ITt contributor had the power to collaborate and argue against the powers that be. And now can do exactly the same, and even have an influence to the Council that will push some points of the agenda to Nokia in a way that no long hot ITt thread could do before. And Talk can still have long hot threads blaming Nokia and whoever you prefer.

All in all I think the whole problem is highly emotional and this is why my personal way to deal with it is to fight not you or you but hunger (in the little measure I can) and tiredness (posting less and thanking more what others say, specially those with good ideas and far from the top posts rankings).

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

I think that the root of the problem might be a perception that an hobbistic, grassroots place of discussion (and its light-hearted fellow inhabitants) has been absorbed into a marketing- and brand-oriented corporate site, which imposes loyalty to brand logo and colors, to proper capitalization of words, and to other trivial details which give people a disturbing feeling of external control.

I don't endorse this view and think that ITT before, and Talk now, are essentially the same thing from same people. But several posts seem to me to come from such a perception.

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

Good points!

- Maemo brand: I agree that grassroots contributors and actually most humans on Earth shouldn't care much about branding and even less about correctness on brands. And I'm saying this as one of the Nokia employees responsible of keeping the Maemo brand clean. So please, don't argue about this. It's true that Nokia is the "external controller" of the Maemo brand but Nokia didn't make the maemo.org logo, nor decided the maemo.org layout and is not enforcing everybody to use proper capitalization on day to day communications (if you come up with a banner for a conference that says "maemo" we will remind you that it is either "maemo.org" or "Maemo" depending on what you want to say, yes).

- About the Talk colors, hopefully the issue is settled now. Right, the process of the new colors was open and democratic, only happening in maemo.org and not directly in ITt. Still... how democratic were the previous designs made by Reggie? Which brings to the next point.

- Conspiracy? Many people in this loud segment of top posters seem not to believe that maemo.org has gone really off the control of Nokia. It has. If the Maemo community doesn't revamp this afternoon the whole contebnt of the website is because you don't feel the ned or you prefer to do other things. This will come clearer with the release of maemo.nokia.com and the Maemo 5 developer pages in Forum Nokia, but this is also tied to the Hunger problem (the release of those sites come together with the release of new software).

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

Yay, cookies before dinner ! It's just amazing how those threads explode.

The true value of the past few days, however, lay with this thread. While some of us might be off to run a few circles around the house now that they have their hunger satiated for a short while, let's not forget this thread. Texrat raised a very important point and had a response which should really be a model for ALL discussions here.

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

Thank you!

And to Quim... Some times a cigar is just a cigar.

The root cause might actually be the reason this thread was created in the first place.

I thought it had to do with the responses on this forum by someone who purports to represent this community. I don't usually respond that way, you don't respond that way, most other members don't respond that way...

How can we as a community communicate to all that most find particular behaviors inappropriate and that they are NOT representative of the spirit, intent, or style of our community.

BTW I agree, it has nothing to do with whatever council a community member belongs to. I also know I am guilty of inappropriate responses at times. What isn't very clear to some is, when is that line crossed?

Re: Open letter to the Maemo community
 

Thank you Texrat for this thread. I believe it is worth pausing and asking ourselves how things are going and, if needed, what can be improved.

I would like to throw-in a couple of points.

- Definitely, I also think that the absence of major changes in hardware/software has left people wanting and provoked long and animated discussions often over trivial things

- Having a Council elected "democratically" creates the perception in some, whether council members or not, that the Council = government. Naturally, given the nature of a basically FOSS community like this, the presence of government authority warrants some reaction. Now, from what I understand, the Council does (should) not have any authority but only help organize work and "represent" the community in certain instances.

- I sometimes wonder if there could be a seasonal cycle in the outburst of violent discussion on the forum. I may be wrong, but I have the impression that last year around this time discussions heated up quite a bit. It looks as if there is a pattern similar to aggressive behavior by car drivers in spring...

I would like to make a couple of suggestions (they are a little provocative):

- To avoid perception of the Council equaling a government authority one could ask whether the democratic principle should be the only or the most appropriate way for the community to organize its work? is there a possibility of a less formal process in which contribution from community members (users and developers) is welcome and streamed into a workflow? Leadership in different areas of maemo related work (web site, software projects, forum, summit, bugs, etc.) would come up from the work done and the ability of members to related to the rest of the community (including the users that are not members).

- To reduce ego battles why not make the whole system anonymous? Nobody would have to defend his/her own position and authority in endless discussions.

- Abolish "Thanks". There is clearly some abuse going on and the thanks system, while well intended, inadvertently may stimulate some not so healthy contest.

- Abolish post count. As was mentioned in another thread, the post count gives the idea that the opinions of those with a higher number count more. The same goes for karma.

I know these suggestions could appear too extreme (although I am convinced that something along the line could help). I hope at least that giving some consideration to how the community works and is organized will make us a little more humble and more willing to help each other. It is useless and counterproductive to have groups and polarization in the community as this could lead to implosion before Nokia or another manufacturer brings a new device to the market.

Regards,
Antonio