Correct, the TiVo community web site is a more direct comparison but the point about all three remains the same - high levels of direct communication between end users and manufacturer/developer. On the TiVo site, TiVoPony is the Product Marketing Manager and way back when TiVo first started (circa 1999) he was the "evangelist" for the product, assisting with queries and problems but also promoting the community and bridging the void between end user and vendor. That community is now huge, and on the whole it's a happy one and I think their policy to evangelise the product through such a direct communication medium enabled the community to grow as rapidly as it did.

The Slim Devices and Infrant forums are slightly different, but it's rare that you find the product designer or CEO chipping into conversations as you do on the Slim Devices forum! Infrant is a very helpful site where the Infrant employees always try to give answers when users ask questions, even if it's "I don't know" or "I can't discuss that".

Announcements will filter down to the forum eventually as there are plenty of people here who read both maemo mailing lists, however I think the forum caters to a different audience than the mailing lists. This site is where your end users hang out, your paying customers... TiVo understood this! It might be tough to strike a balance between mailing list and forum, but I'm sure it should be possible.

Hopefully enough members of this forum will join up and post in the maemo users forum/mailing list, but beware of fragmentation - I still don't think it would be wise to ignore this place!