Some of the posts here touch on the question of leadership,
and I think that must be part of a solution.

I believe in Paulkoan's idea:

ITt had a captain, like a ship.
Pro: Quick and flexible response to problems.
Con: Difficult to manage when it grows very large.

When ITt and maemo.org joined, some streamlining and simplifying was done,
otherwise integrating them would probably have become unwieldy.
And a more democratic leadership was chosen.

Now that maemo.org is stabilizing and the different parts are working and becoming filled with content,
perhaps it is time to
think back and consider if anything important was lost in the process.
Penguinbait certainly seems to have a point there.
(Also when he mentions that projects handling dependancies in a somewhat unorthodox way or having 300 Mb tarballs would have a hard time to fit in maemo.org's standard procedures.)

The kind of forum I think PB is looking for works much better, I believe,
under a captain or a troika or something similar (benevolent, of course),
than under democratic leadership.
(Just as an institution for scientific research needs a dedicated and enthusiastic leader.)
Remember C. N. Parkinson's (the one with P:n's law) distinction between a committee (7 or less) and a conference (anything larger):
A committee can produce alternatives and decide, a conference can only decide between presented alternatives.

>> I think TALK should have a subset, let's say "Hacker's Corner",
>> managed locally
>> and rather (but not wholly) independant of the community leadership.
This could restore the functions PB is looking for without leading to fragmentation.
It's theme could be slightly but obviously different. This together with the name and suitable warnings in stickie threads would warn beginners and more advanced beginners to beware.
(Also, a new Linux user - like me - soon has to learn that this world has it's dangers.
Someone, I forget who, said in a post to a "newbie": "Linux is a complicated beast.")
The TALK search engine might be set by default to exclude "Hackers Corner" and possibly have a toggle to include it for advanced users.
(Or search results from "Hacker's Corner" could be marked with a Danger Sign.)
A "Hacker's repository" (possibly with a future "devel" section) would seem to be needed too.

Much of this has been said, but mostly without considering the need for a different kind of leadership in a "Hacker's Corner" than in the forum as a whole.

Just a non-programmer's two (and a half) cents.


Some arguments pointing in a similar direction: