Some of the posts here touch on the question of leadership,
and I think that must be part of a solution.

I believe in Paulkoan's idea:

ITt had a captain, like a ship.
Pro: Quick and flexible response to problems.
Con: Difficult to manage when it grows very large.

When ITt and maemo.org joined, some streamlining and simplifying was done,
otherwise integrating them would probably have become unwieldy.
And a more democratic leadership was chosen.

Now that maemo.org is stabilizing and the different parts are working and becoming filled with content,
perhaps it is time to
think back and consider if anything important was lost in the process.
Penguinbait certainly seems to have a point there.
(Also when he mentions that projects handling dependancies in a somewhat unorthodox way or having 300 Mb tarballs would have a hard time to fit in maemo.org's standard procedures.)

The kind of forum I think PB is looking for works much better, I believe,
under a captain or a troika or something similar (benevolent, of course),
than under democratic leadership.
(Just as an institution for scientific research needs a dedicated and enthusiastic leader.)
Remember C. N. Parkinson's (the one with P:n's law) distinction between a committee (7 or less) and a conference (anything larger):
A committee can produce alternatives and decide, a conference can only decide between presented alternatives.

>> I think TALK should have a subset, let's say "Hacker's Corner",
>> managed locally
>> and rather (but not wholly) independant of the community leadership.
This could restore the functions PB is looking for without leading to fragmentation.
It's theme could be slightly but obviously different. This together with the name and suitable warnings in stickie threads would warn beginners and more advanced beginners to beware.
(Also, a new Linux user - like me - soon has to learn that this world has it's dangers.
Someone, I forget who, said in a post to a "newbie": "Linux is a complicated beast.")
The TALK search engine might be set by default to exclude "Hackers Corner" and possibly have a toggle to include it for advanced users.
(Or search results from "Hacker's Corner" could be marked with a Danger Sign.)
A "Hacker's repository" (possibly with a future "devel" section) would seem to be needed too.

Much of this has been said, but mostly without considering the need for a different kind of leadership in a "Hacker's Corner" than in the forum as a whole.

Just a non-programmer's two (and a half) cents.


Some arguments pointing in a similar direction:

I think I've been banned from penguinbait's new forum after just one post!

No Itt's gone. The intent was to see if there was support for this. I have gotten about 10 members., who have for the most part been pretty quiet. Don't get me wrong, they came over and showed support for it, but ultimately 10 people joining is not going to cut it. I have gone through the post and added tags to them all [KDE] anyway to try to be more usable. New hardware will come, Alternatives will take off and sub-forums will return. So best at this point do some cleanup and wait for the community to request them again. Which should be pretty easy to do with relevant tags.

If I have made a bad decision, I am sure that I will be told. If everyone in alternatives, or the majority doesn't want to do something, then it would just fragment the community, with some here and some there.

I am not against a separate place for hackings, but thats what alternatives is. Would I like to have sub-forums sure, will I keep saying that until someone listen's. But until they do we have to make do with what we have, which means house cleaning and tag's, and making some canned searches to show you what you want to see.

pb

Just a (slightly off topic) question:
Is the term "Internet Tablet" exclusive for Nokia/Maemo devices?
Where do we talk about devices that could fill the niche for people who don't want to talk about phones?