MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Several peple very active in Talk have been mentioning here and there that MeeGo needs a forum. Let's Talk first here. ;)

What scenario do we wish?

1. Empty Drupal in the lines of http://drupal.org/forum (meego.com sits on a Drupal CMS so this is the easiest solution).

2. Empty vBulletin (the software used here at Talk) for some reason to be detailed. I guess this would come with some help from Reggie since the web team probably is not familiar with it. Single Sign-on to be investigated.

3. Rename talk.maemo.org --> talk.meego.com. There might be some legal problems moving accounts with private data under another domain (no idea). Another problem, perhaps bigger, is to move all this crew there, leaving nothing for those not interested in 'MeeGo' (from strict N900 users not that interested in platform etc to people with a strong opinion about MeeGo for some reason, OS2008 users, etc).

There might be more sane solutions but none comes to my mind now. Some insane do come but I don't even dare to write them down. ;)

My preferred? Start from scratch with a Drupal forum.

I don't see what features are so great in vBulletin and can't be found in Drupal's forum, but if you know them please share.

Just renaming this maemo.org Talk forum with a new theme sounds like a good idea when you first think of it. But then you keep thinking and imaging it and... it starts becoming scary. Like the internettablettalk.com move but multiplied exponentially?

Besides, there is a good point that we have started to learn after the N900 launch which is that a nice % of people are happy with Device X and wants to meet others discussing about Device X. Imagine that there is nn successful and diverse MeeGo devices within a year. What then?

Anyway. Thoughts?

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

personally prefer vbulletin - but don't feel we are using many of the features that we could be using, so with that in mind drupal will be fine :)

I think the focus needs to be around the single sign on...

Talk Forums -> Linked to:

• Wiki
• Development
• Bugs
• Mailout / bulletins
• News pages / blogs
• downloads
• community

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Some days I wish there was a way of giving more than one 'thanks' per post.

This is exactly what I've been waiting to hear. There is already talk around about various fan-run MeeGo options. For me, the important thing about t.m.o. is the integration with the full community.

A few thoughts: it might be terribly tempting to avoid the 'noise' that we get at t.m.o. by either not having a forum at Meego, or by not allowing the endusers in. "Let them go and create their own noisy fan-based places." Personally, I think that would be a mistake. The Noise is the price paid for an awful lot of energy, enthusiasm, willing testing, feedback, ideas... we may look like a horde of elephants, but actually we committed end users have our uses.

It might also be tempting to just fold in/carry over/rename what we have here into Meego. After all, this is good, no? I think that too would be a mistake. What we have here is an opportunity to redesign the talk forums from the ground up to create a good, safe space for the legacy devices and platforms (including moblin, actually, as well as the maemo devices!), a solid integrated space for developers to interact usefully with their users, and hopefully something that channels the noise to where it can be least harmful (and maybe most fun, as a result).

I have a head full of ideas - was planning to blog about this this evening!

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Thanks Quim for starting this thread.

I would think there should be a separate forum so discussions are not one-sided. By one-sided I mean not just maemo.org folks talking about MeeGo. We need to bring in folks from the Moblin community as well.

I don't think option 3 is a good solution as if I understand it correctly, Maemo and Moblin will still have their own unique devices and stores and enthusiasts loyal to each brand might want an 'official' forum of their own. Plus I fear Moblin folks getting intimidated to register or join the discussion here in this current forum.

With regards to Option 2, I can setup a MeeGo vbulletin forum in less than an hour. I can set up a forum only site for the meantime (say meegotalk.com) so both camps have a common discussion board as we sort things out.

I would like to hear other suggestions however.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

you could import a current moblin into vbulletin (Not merging)
you have two separate vbulletin sites then...

After that you have the ability to link them, or merge them.... But the two forum idea i also prefer, but, keeping the single sign-on process allows you to log into both with the same login ;)

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

this is the right step, by moving the forums straight to meego it eliminates any need for us users to do anything and they will be acustomed to the new site etc

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Option 2 all the way. I've used Drupal forums from both ends in the past, not a fan. We already have all the features we want in vBulletin and we have at least one expert who knows how to use it.

Choice seems pretty clear to me. ;)

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

The only drawback with a separate moblin vbulletin is that there isn't one. Moblin peoples haven't communicated in this way (by choice?) so expecting them to suddenly start doing so might be a challenge.

I also think we need to look hard at the structure to make sure we encourage people a) to seek support in the right place and b) to be noisy in the right place. By and large, we operate a 'serious thread v chat thread' breakdown here, which most of us more or less 'get' instinctively. But we could certainly use something which enabled people who only want the serious stuff to find it quickly. And I'd love to see a space dedicated to providing the sort of speicalist help and support we've become known for where giving help was properly affirmed.

Edit: suggest we let Reggie open some sort of vbulletin place asap, with just a few areas for discussion. I'd like to hear the moblin people's views and they aren't here.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Absolutely, keep it separate for now please. Thanks Reggie for the alternatives if MeeGo mailing list isn't sufficient.

QGil properly said let the community decide. Well, maemo.org may decide to remain independent of meego. (I don't think it necessarily should) You should respect that option IMHO and let maemo.org decide what it wants to do and allow time for it to decide what to do. N8xx users already feel pushed out at times and using t.m.o for discussions on MeeGo uniquely will only marginalize them further.

I appreciate the motivation to try to get the community coalesced around the merger, but the merger decided to move forward without a priori maemo.org support. IMHO, we need to wait and let maemo.org support come forward on its own terms and on its own
time schedule.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

But are we going to need those features there? Karma, thanks, and all that... how is the MeeGo community going to function?

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Moblin is about at a 770-level community and there was plenty of traffic on itT to support a forum at that time, so it shouldn't be an issue.

Most Nokia people don't use Talk now, either, but it's not the end of the world. ;)

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

This is not only about the Maemo and Moblin communities. There is plenty of people now interested in MeeGo that were not in any of these two communities before.

But anyway.

Reggie, are you aware of how things look like with single sign-on vBulletin-Drupal?

GeneralAntilles (or whoever disliking Drupa forums) can you get into details about what is bad? "Not a fan" doesn't really help making evaluations. :)

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Yes, I'd like to see them there.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I would go this way, or an empty vBulleting. Moving this forum over would have the benefit that we already have a nice community over here, so there wouldn't be need to build one from scratch.

Using a Drupal module doesn't sound like a good idea, just like using a Midgard module wouldn't have made much sense for maemo.org. Generally a specialized forum application is better in every way than something developed as a minor part of a CMS. I'm pretty sure we already learned that with Maemo's Wiki :rolleyes:

The new forum would need properly labeled areas for Maemo and Moblin things to discuss the older platform releases, as well as new ones for MeeGo (and the different UX versions).

Besides, we already have some experiences with rebranding this forum, from the ITT -> TMO change...

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Seems like the best option. Open source infrastructure, gets automatic single sign-on with the rest of meego.com, and avoids the inevitable friction that would result from another renaming.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

We're discussing the decision to go with Drupal for the primary CMS as we speak, actually. . . .

Lack of features compared to vBulletin, obnoxious to use browsing and posting interface and the sort. It's had issues dealing with heavy loads on a couple of sites I've been a user on and it was really a pain to setup and administer for others I've tried to run it on (admittedly this was a long time ago now, but still).

Besides, other than being open source, why would we prefer Drupal?

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Question is, will they be integrated in "our" community like the new n900 owners have been here or is the MeeGo community going be something different and function in other ways than Maemo's or Moblin's.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I hope MeeGo will have similar community involvement infrastructure as we now have for maemo.org, or better. And Karma is a pretty important part of that.

This can be accomplished either by moving existing Midgard-based services over to meego.com infrastructure and integrating them with the MeeGo visuals and Drupal accounts, or by porting the functionality over to Drupal. Either way works, though the Midgard stuff is something we have now and know that works in the Maemo scale :)

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Should we wait for an invitation from over there (or has there been one already I don't know about)? Think of the situation from Meego/Moblin point of view

yes

I hope people are not going to repeat the same mistake. Please, let us get a decision from the community at large before rebranding or moving the whole forum.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Is there a possibility to "link" to the same vBulletin from many sites? What I'm imagining is that talk.meego.com and talk.maemo.org share some portions, for example Community, Platform and Development. talk.meego.org forum would only show these and possibly some more MeeGo related sections, while talk.maemo.org would have what it has now.

You could participate in the discussion in the (example) three shared sections from both sites and keep the device/Nokia specific discussions here. That would provide continuity here and get things started at talk.meego.org. In my opinion it might not be a great idea to just dump everything to a one big mess in talk.meego.com. I also don't think it's a good idea to keep two separate community sections.

This just off the top of my head, have no idea if it's feasible at all?

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I haven't seen this (I'll check though) but I've seen one an SSO with OpenID and vBulletin. I think the main MeeGo site supports OpenID now.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

OpenID would have the added benefit that people could transfer their identities from other sites too, not only from maemo.org and meego.com

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

uffff saw that. I really don't want to add more posts to meego-dev. Hopefully the meego-community list will be fixed as soon as we get in PST decent times.

Anyway, the argument to go for a specdialized forum tool makes sense regardles of the CMS and vBulletin has proven to be useful. I wonder if anybody will have a strong opinion about the proprietary license.

The single sign-on should be in place before starting though, don't you think? Otherwise we are just creating future hassle merging accounts. Share your ideas on this, please.

And transferring all this Talk content and users under meego.com........ I really don't know. Between smelly and scary.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I've tried that before and it just became messy since it's heavy on hacking the forums registration table.

What would work however is for me to internally query posts information for karma purposes from different forum databases, if ever that comes into play in the future.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Single sign on for meego.com is essential Don't let's go down the road of multiple log-ins again. Please.

I wouldn't attempt to suck all the people (let alone all the posts! :eek:) from here accross for a number of reasons. One is technical: horrible task to do, and I would hope we'll get a better structure in a new place where we can start from scratch.

Secondly, I actually think there is value psychologically in asking people to 'sign-up' for the New Thing. (Interesting to see who already has. ;) )

Thirdly, I think we may want to think of 'grandfathering' this place for a while for people who don't want to sign up to MeeGo. In the long run, I would hope (and guess) most people will either move across or move elsewhere: it's the actual Activity here (for which read development, bugs, testing, ideas, support) which are atv the heart of this place, for all the Noise. Take that away, and the noise will soon die down. The people will go where the action is: either following it to MeeGo or following those devs who decide not to make the jump.

(I'd go with smelly)

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I'd stick with vBulletin - everyone knows it (if they've used other forums before, it's hugely popular and there's probably a good reason for that).

If possible, make this the new MeeGo forum: create a Maemo sub-section, which might become a "Nokia devices" section within MeeGo in future. All existing members can participate in the MeeGo sections as and when it becomes relevant to them.

Since there is going to be some sort of compatibility between the next OS (aka MeeGo) and the existing Maemo5, it makes no sense to split the communities when there is so much potential overlap.

t.m.o. has almost 30,000 registered members, how many Moblin forum members are there? On numbers alone, this community surely dominates and should continue with as little disturbance as possible on meego.com

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I think we should get *something* going for conversation at MeeGo pronto. So I'll bite the bullet and suggest we ask Reggie to open something with just three main areas right now: community, development and devices.

Then ask people to care enough to register there (or use a t.m.o. log in if that's easy enough for Reggie), and use those spaces to slug out Deb v rpm, vbulletin v drupal, what shape forums, where the summit and what devices. Ultimately we can design this ourselves from the ground up. Lets start with something. Otherwise we're over here and the moblin guys are over there and it's just getting scarier and smellier.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I think what Milhouse suggests makes a lot of sense.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Looks like Drupal has distributed authentication built in: http://drupal.org/node/312

There is this too: http://vbdrupal.org/

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Whatever forum engine would be used, it should start clean. We already have too much noise here, so moving that noise to MeeGo would be, IMHO, a very bad idea.

I would also like to see a restructuring of the forum at the same time. I personally found the one here at maemo.org a bit confusing in the beginning. For example there is N900, Maemo 5 and Application. Which one I should use to find some info for available apps for N900? As I said, it was a bit confusing at the beginning.

Since, as it has been pointed out, MeeGo is not only attracting people from Maemo and Moblin communities, but others too, so the structure of the forum should be as logical and effective as possible. So the structure should be discussed too. I personally would prefer something like this

- Platform/Version X
-- Applications
-- Games
-- Development
--- Framework X
-- Device X
--- Help
--- Complaints (or whatever is the politically correct way to contain whiners/noise :))


Yes, I really would like it if there would be a way to contain all these unhappy but very noisy people with too much time on their hands. :p

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I guess I'm against the grain here...

I, personally, will always go Open Source over Proprietary any day of the weak. It's worth losing a few features that I can then implement myself if I really need them to me to support an Open Source project. I pick the FOSS project that closest resembles what I need and then expand from there.

Obviously I won't not go if they use vBulletin (double negatives are fun), I come here don't I? :)

I also do not think it's a good idea to move t.m.o to meego. At least, not at this time. Meego is still in it's infancy and doesn't need this atmosphere just yet... it needs a smaller dedicated group of people that are willing to visit a separate forum to discuss it. (I'm not saying it just needs Dev's.. it needs people like Kathy too for end-user perspectives. So I'm not isolating you Big Bear ;))

As far as single-sign-on, I don't know about that. For the same reason as above - make it *too* easy to go over there and it just becomes noise. MeeGo doesn't need flame/troll/bait/complaints.. it needs people willing to move forward and work on a specific goal.

OTOH, it's likely that eventually some form of merger between the two will take place (at the least a SSO solution to be made) - especially if people (like STskeeps) backport or maintain a MeeGo port for the N900, for example. But.. this also presents the perfect opportunity to do what some people on these forums have been crying for: A separate forum for (the now) "Maemo" people (770/8x0 and maybe the 900) will stay here.. while the "MeeGo" people will go over there.

So anyway.. I guess in summary:

Always FOSS.
Start fresh. Don't move content.
Don't think we need to be overly concerned about SSO *yet*.. though it'll likely be needed eventually.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Don't jump the gun too much (Very NHS Kathy!!) - want to make sure the quick win solution works with an overall plan between the two communities...

No point ending up with a site with 6 logins, and not working correctly :)
(30 mins to set up, 2 days to un-tangle!) lol :)

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

The MeeGo community is currently very immature, though, and it needs to be done carefully such that the conversations don't get even further split:

• A lot of technical discussion/brainstorming on #meego
• Technical rants/flamewars about RPM/deb/yum/apt on meego-dev (and maybe some concretely useful stuff too about whether there's an upstream or everything gets repackaged from real upstream tarballs)
• Community discussion on meego-community
• Questions about how things fit in with current plans on maemo.org
• Questions about how things fit in with current plans on moblin.org
• Planning and content on wiki.meego.com
• ...and then 3 separate fora

The Maemo community is a lot bigger and in many ways more sophisticated than the Moblin one. A lot of the core MeeGo team, though, are Moblin developers. The Maemo community needs, IMHO, to be careful from being seen as coming in and tipping up the apple carts.

So, yes, a forum. Yes, a good one. No, it doesn't need to be over-engineered but we can't just set up something, expect at some later point it to be integrated into meego.com and then say "oi, you lot; stop talking on mailing lists and come to this forum".

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I don't believe I ever said that even to our own mailing list users. :)

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I don't know which forum software to recommend, but I definitely don't think you should just rename talk.maemo.org to something on meego.com. MeeGo is only relevant from the next device onwards, so users of older tablets (and N900, arguably), shouldn't be "absorbed" by meego.com.

Yes, it would be a shame that meego.com wouldn't instantly gain a community, and people will have to separately register, but I don't think moving this forum to meego.com is as uncontroversial a decision as it was when this was moved from internettabletalk.com.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

But also not the other way around. Current infra is created from the moblin side without any communication with the Maemo community.

Let's try to start with a proper plan, instead of regretting it later.

MeeGo is now not more than an announcement, we have the opportunity to get things right from the start. It is not like we have millions of active users and device owners of MeeGo products out there. I think it can manage to survive the few days we need to discuss this properly.

Merging all kinds of data later on because we were in a rush (now) is not the way to go about this.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

My concern is with the 'where' and the 'how' of discussing this properly Now. I see a few threads here. I see next to nothing at MeeGo. And I don't even know how to look at moblin. I see nothing in maemo-community, and the meego-community mailing isn't working yet.

What I'm suggesting is that we use a bit of resource to create common space where we can have those discussions with both communities. Threads about "Shall we run a forum on vbulletin, drupal or something else altogether?" aren't necessarily ones we need to merge anywhere once the discussion is had and the decisions made. But a bit of open, common space between the two groups would be useful right now, even if we tear it down in 3 months time when we've decided what we want to build.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I have to reiterate the opinion that *not* using a Drupal forum module and instead integrating vb or even phpbb into the Meego site with unified sign-in is far better. I checked out all of the Drupal forum modules not too long ago and even the Advanced Forum module, which I personally use on my site for simplicity, just lacks so much in comparison to TMO right now that it wouldn't make much sense.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I think maemo 6 and meego should be in separate forums

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Current setup is such that it is a very much closed system where one can't even find out who does what. I can't help out with infrastructure issues like the broken lists, simply because I don't have access. You'd have to wait for some Intel admins to wake up.

Everybody still needs to find out what is really going on and what is expected. It would have been nice if the guys who made deal in the first place, did a round of introductions. Just expect people to offer themselves and find it out for themselves is not optimal.