Thanks for this - it's been the most helpful to me post on the topic.

I don't want to get into specific "nit-picking" over what happened where, just to identify the types of issues that have arisen and how they can be addressed.

On the one, thing, though:

Hmm. You're half right: the redesign of maemo.org - as a whole - happened mainly through maemo-community, the wiki and IRC meetings. However, there was no discussion in those environments as to how talk would look (although there were discussions about particular elements which may have been used on talk - like a user header for download comments which had a requirement of being able to be reused elsewhere).

The redesign of the talk theme was entirely in Reggie's hands (within the overall look & feel) - just as all the other themes (which over the past 4 years have always been met by constructive criticism) have been.

Perhaps the council should have worked on pushing Reggie to deliver prototypes, mockups and plans - but that seems unfair to him when he a) always delivers; b) has the best interests of the community at heart; c) is doing this in his spare time and d) isn't employed by the community (as represented by the council).


Thanks - it's useful. No need to apologise for stating your understanding/impression; it's when people start stating such things as facts that I get frustrated.

At that point, though, nothing you could have done would have made you eligible - as there's an account age limit to prevent ballot stuffing. And, as I said, trying to mobilise people about process before an election/referendum has proved to be impossible (see, for example, the threads on counting methods).

Now, we've already decided that "talk.maemo.org account" falls under the definition of "maemo.org account" as stated in the election process; so this shouldn't be an issue next time.

And that is a big problem. For which I can only apologise. I can promise that, as a council, we will take more care in our "official" communications for big, important, things like this in future.