Thread: Who finds themselves coming to these forums less after the change of image?
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Jaffa is offline Jaffa
2009-05-01 , 07:17
Posts: 2,535 | Thanked: 6,681 times | Joined on Mar 2008 @ UK
#25
Originally Posted by YoDude View Post
One of the attractions for me was that it did appear to be an alternative to Maemo.org. and that no longer is the case it seams.
Why do we need an alternative to maemo.org? maemo.org is our site; Nokia kindly pay the bills and pay for 4 full-time members of staff, and additional contractors for other work we want.

For good or ill, enthusiasts need an alternative to the status quo. Corporations in the past couple of years have gotten the "Forum" religion and see it as way to control their products message. That may or not be so in this case but things have changed here none the less.
Can you give examples? Theme changes don't count (the theme was designed by a member of the community, implemented on talk by Reggie etc.) Moderators are drawn from the community (who've volunteered). This is no more a Nokia product forum now than it was in October 2005.

It has been my experience that the need for enthusiasts to create and maintain a culture that is separate and apart from a corporate controlled culture is so great that new forums will pop up overnight. Some become much more popular than the corporate sponsored ones.
Like Tablet Scene? Nothing is stopped new fora being developed, but I singularly fail to see the point at the moment.

Some scenarios:
  • Nokia somehow get themselves more moderators, and then start stamping down hard on threads critcial of them/deleting posts.
  • Nokia pull the funding plug.
  • Nokia take back control of maemo.org
  • ...

First thing that'd happen is that the Community Council (our community council) would try to make them realise the error of their ways; but as a final resort, Reggie pulls talk.maemo.org back out to internettablettalk.com, reinstates adverts and possibly asks for donations to cover the costs.

Are there other scenarios you can think of which could be detrimental to this place? (Apart from every other thread being full of theme whining) Is there any evidence in your eyes that any of these scenarios are coming to play?

Yes, we've now got moderators; and yes, they're still figuring out the best way of doing it. But they're not Nokia sponsored, they're giving up their time to do it for free and we - as a forum - have been asking Reggie for moderators since I joined back in October 2005.
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