This thread appears to have wandered in a number of different ways ... anyway, here's what I think, as a new member of the forum who'd like to help, but is feeling wholly overwhelmed by this place at the moment.

I really don't want to annoy or upset anybody, I just think since you're currently wondering why you aren't seeing more helpful newbies it wouldn't hurt from you to hear from a me as a newbie about my perspectve ...

Firstly ... this current tone of this forum is pretty off-putting, so it'd be nice if something changed soon ...

... the first area I have issues with is the newbie jumping in with both feet and complaining loudly about what a crappy phone/mobile computer/whatever they've just purchased ... I don't have a problem with their complaints so much, they're going to complain after all, but I do have an issue with the way these posts are dealt with by the community, if I felt ownership of this community I'd point them towards the nokia forums and tell them to go complain over there, as this is a place of finding solutions to problems not banging on and on about them, then find out if there's something I could actually help them with ... I'd also discourage people from continuing to respond over and over to threads like that, continually bumping them back up the forum, and rehashing the arguments over and over again.

... the next area I have issue with in relation to the current tone of the forum is the number of navel gazing threads started by and populated by the forum's "elite" members, raking over just how bad things are at the moment and how annoyed they are with all of the newbies on the forum ... it's always worth remembering just how many newbies will be lurking and reading these threads who haven't actually caused any problems yet, but are being put off the community by the bickering on threads like these ...

Secondly the Forum and Community structure is wholly baffling to me and I've been here for weeks now ... somebody really needs to sort out the multiple sign in system asap, it's wholly ridiculous for a site like this ...

… is there a good reason for the current forum structure? … I own an n900 and there must be at least 10 individual forums covering things I’m interested in … I'm really not sure it needs to be quite that hard to find the right place to post/read … I'm not sure it’s possible, but it would be nice if individual threads could appear in multiple forums if they are related to more than one forum … it would also be much easier if you had a dedicated help forum … that way all of the people who'd just like a simple answer to a simple question could find an easy place to post and any simple questions could easily be answered by those of us who’ve read slightly further afield and are happy to help ...

... if somebody complains about a potential bug, they shouldn't be told to file a bug report without also being told how, and if you don't want newbies filling bug reports then you need to stop telling them to, but instead work out how to get the pertinent information from them ...

... it should be easier to help test apps from Extras-Testing ... so far as I can see, this is something that most helpful members of the community should be able to assist with, it probably wouldn't hurt if the extras-testing repo was accessible only by people who'd agreed to help actually test the apps available, thus hopefully increasing the number promoted to extras ...

... just my thoughts ... feel free to ignore them and carry on raking over the woes of the world!

... oh and incase I forgot to say before, I really do appreciate everything you've all done for the community ... all of the questions you've answered, all of the solutions you've created discovered and in any way helped to bring about!