What hasn’t been posted was the # of registered users of itT vs. maemo.org. Many members of iTT were not registered members of maemo.org at the time and were not eligible to vote.
Many times more than just 700 I believe…

So it wasn’t a classic Coup d'état but it doesn’t much matter as it has nothing to do with governance of the organization or the administration of the forum

What steamed the clams of most I believe was that many were not aware of elections or any changes to the forum until a thread asking the question “Why didn’t you vote?” was posted. The ensuing turmoil eventually died down but new threads started popping up suggesting we move this and change that.
Again, most registered forum members didn’t get involved. They may have believed that the forum was still administered by Reggie under the terms they agreed to when they first joined the forum. Others may have never imagined a forum run as an ad hoc democracy and didn’t pay these “Hey kids! Why don’t we try this.” threads much mind. And others still may have just come to the forums only to promote or learn about the latest Tablet ideas and applications.

Whatever the reason, a lot of forum members were taken by surprise when the changes did occur. However, a smaller more active group was not surprised because they were members of maemo.org and on various mailing lists and/or monitored the relay channels where discussions about these changes took place.

Now imagine that for a moment... It was very possible that a member of a maemo.org who had never posted a word on itT would know more about the changes about to take place on itT than a contributing member of itT who has come to the forum almost daily for the past 3 years.

That’s when things started to get spicy ‘round here.

The people who were only registered as members of the forum learned that they apparently had been conscripted into the geek squad and any status they perceived they had achieved by contributing to this forum was now somehow stripped until they registered. Even if their papers were in order, somehow forum contributions were calculated at a lower rate than say, posting in a maemo.org Wiki. Some thought they now had to start at the bottom of this new “karma” thing. Others thought that simply cutting a post from the forum and pasting it in the Wiki earned someone more karma than the forum member who actualy composed and posted it on the forum in the first place. Imagine that.

(Social anthropology students may be familiar with the studies conducted by Dr. Suess in Sneetchland during the early ‘60’s that helps explain this phenomenon.)

Some look for an antecedent and consequence to help understand a behaviors dynamics. Now this is only a theory Captain, but it seems that in this case the antecedent was Nokia and the consequence was to increase membership in The Maemo Community.

Things change.