Thread: Open letter to the Maemo community
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manchuia is offline manchuia
2009-05-25 , 00:06
Posts: 45 | Thanked: 16 times | Joined on Oct 2007 @ Charlottesville
#27
Originally Posted by TenSpeed View Post
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.
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.
Last edited by manchuia; 2009-05-25 at 00:12.
 

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