I want exactly what GAN described: this site to be the interesting place.

Of course, "interesting" is a purely subjective work, but I hope you all currently present in this site know which "interests" have keep us all here.

There are lots of sites with examples of how to do this. Reggie has lots of experience: today I discovered he founded ClieSource (this means I've nearly spent half my life browsing forums founded by Reggie ). 1src was the prime example of an "interesting" site with both newbie users and über-gurus (the kind who end up as vmware employees doing low-level stuff, I hope all of you who followed 1src know who I'm talking about), all of them establishing useful conversations. Nearly all of the last PalmOS developments came from 1src.

Most of the Linux video game consoles sites are also good examples.
But I don't like them for a reason: developers there usually provide videos or screen shots of their "accomplishments" instead of source code. This happens because usually there are around 3 developers for each 300 users, and the formers usually talk using IRC or email, so, why publish the source code? Nobody is ever going to try to build it. Now upload a video, even for code you're never going to release, and you're going to get lots of "aahs" and "oohs".

Unfortunately, it's very hard to find the right balance in the devs vs users ratio, and even harder is to actually _move_ it. This is why I'd prefer a conservative, slow approach to the whole issue. I find it evident the balance in this forum is currently biased to the developer side, but slowly going to the user side (faster on the last few days, with "free energy" discussions already appearing).

Ideally, nobody would start the "Maemo-noobs.org" forum, but I know that's going to happen. If the N900 is a hit, even currently phone/iphone/pda-oriented regional forums are going to become established centers of N900 "newbie" users. So I find no need to promote these; they will appear either way.


To sum it off (since I have to go to bed): do nothing. Most devs will probably remain here, along with the "elevated" user base (for a start, those who care enough to speak english). The more hardcore devs are already absent from here, and limit themselves to the mailing lists. And the larger user base will find its way on a forum where 400px long signatures are allowed.

(Curiously enough, this situation reminds me of the PalmOS situation:
Palm mailing-lists: core devs, hard core OS questions.
Unknown Palm channel I didn't seen: commercial devs
1src: most app devs, and most interesting "discoveries" being done there. some users too, both educated and "non-educated"
"regional"/"in-your-language" generic PDA forums: news were usually relayed from 1src, mostly users, a few developers in between.
)