But a forum is a good place to find out whether a problem is real, widespread, and whether others have fixed or worked around it, without implying any wholesale comment about the total worth of the device, the forum, the manufacturer, or the developers, or implying any relationship or support agreement between parties.

A lot of people are DIYers, and go to community forums first. How could PC overclocking forums even survive, for example, if everyone said "contact the manufacturer" or "that's not supported by Intel -- you're on your own" when an overclocking experiment failed? A lot of us approach our phones the same way, as DIYers. We depend on each other for support, even if it's not officially sanctioned by any group.

If I have a problem with a new car, I don't necessarily immediately take it back to the dealer -- I search car forums and see whether my problem is really a user error, whether it warrants taking it back, whether I can fix it myself, or whether a buddy mechanic of mine can fix it better than the dealer can without ending the warranty.

Whining and angry posts, even if undirected or misdirected at first, can be turned into constructive action. For example:

Poster: "Although I loved it at first, I now hate the N900. It's got an awful email client."

Bad replies: "You should have better informed yourself before buying it." "Go buy an iPhone, Nokia-hater." "This is not a Nokia support forum -- go contact them." "The mail client is what it is -- live with it, or use another phone."

Good reply: "I understand, it really sucks for me too. The N900 email client sucks, but they're working on it. Here are some bug reports you can vote on. I'm also thinking about this solution as a possible workaround. What do you think?"

Constructive, reasoned reply, combined with empathy

Sorry, I don't buy it (pun intended) When you choose to buy a car or phone, you can be an informed consumer and decide that among all available alternatives under a certain cost, given all information available to you short of buying or renting it first, that a particular product is the best for your needs, even though it may not perfectly meet your expectations/wishes.

That does not in any way invalidate your wanting parts of it to change. Put another way, asking for features to change does not represent evasion of responsibility for choosing to buy it.

(The "cost" above is a total subjective cost, not just price. For some people the cost of having to tweak OS files, for example, is more than it is for others. These subjective costs significantly factor into why people choose one device over another.)

Buying on specs alone is not always sufficient to tell if a device meets your needs, and some people do not have easy access to products so that they can try them out without buying them first (in the USA for example, carrier-locked phones are 95+% of the market and hence unless a carrier sells a phone in a retail store, you cannot try it out before buying it unless you find someone who already has it and is willing to share it).

So, irrational as it may be, there are certain expectations that people have, even if they are not confirmed by the specs or promised by the manufacturer/developer. Sometimes these expectations are not even known about until they are violated, so you don't think to ask about them before buying, hence the angry rants by some posters who feel violated. Haven't you bought a product which didn't do what you expected, only to wish that you had checked if that one "obvious" feature was there before buying? You cannot check everything ahead of time, so this kind of disappointment is bound to turn up even among well-informed buyers.

Yes, that would certainly be more constructive, and more likely to be a win-win situation in the long run. Most of us agree with that. But you can also constructively reply to non-constructive comments, with disarming empathy