maemo.org - Talk - View Single Post - Who finds themselves coming to these forums less after the change of image?

	YoDude	2009-05-01 , 23:14
	Posts: 2,869 \| Thanked: 1,784 times \| Joined on Feb 2007 @ Po' Bo'. PA	#71

Originally Posted by Jaffa

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.

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.

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.

Whoa, a multi statement post with other posts quoted are hard to reply to... I thought I saw a multi-quote feature in this new lay-out before Reggie was asked to change things...
Oh well I'll just blast away and hope this makes sense.

There are about 22,000 forum members and as far as I can tell maybe 150, 30 item pages as the maemo.org members list or about 4,500 members.

Originally Posted by You

Why do we need an alternative to maemo.org?

You may not, but apparently about 17,500 forum members who are not maemo.org members may feel they do.

Granted, it may be an awareness issue for some. Others may not have the time to get involved in design by comitee. Others still, may feel more comfortable in a web forum atmosphere. For me it's a bit of all three.
(It may also be that my membership estimates are wrong.

)

In any event, right now there are about 50 members and 190 guests (?) viewing this forum. In March of last year over 600 members were on line at one time. When Maemo5 becomes reality this forum could see many thousands of new eye balls on-line at one time.

Now if the reason forum member saturation in maemo.org is so low is awareness and you wish to improve that, it would seem to me that more threads inviting eye balls to other maemo.org components by way of links to content and posted announcements would be in order.

If it is a comfort level or atmosphere issue, why is the emphasis on making the forum more maemo.org like and not the other way around?

In the end though the reason for an alternative is simply human nature and the perception, real or imagined, of a shibboleth among the status quo.

"If it ain't broke... fix it until it is."

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