Wow.

If everyone could only direct half as much passion at troubleshooting software and hardware, we could finish the N900 by dinner, be ready for Harmattan by the weekend, and close the place down and go home.

Some good points bandied about here but i'm a bit disturbed by the volume because the people that are the problem aren't going to be convinced: they don't want to be convinced. Ultimately, a person is going to become a productive member of any society, or they are not, and it's usually not hard to tell the difference after their first dozen posts. The good thing about online fora is that there are appointed mod-gods to cast out those who don't belong.

The main problem i've seen with T.M.O is that the mods are too benevolent...and too busy being productive.

Well, some users DO go to bugzilla... and promptly continue ranting instead of providing useful information

On a personal level, I think ignoring them is a good option, together with some Dexter-style moderation

Well - I do think the N900 has its good and bad points.

And the Phone part is the really bad point in the N900. Being Nokia you should expect flag if you make a product with a phone in it where the Phone part is not up to scratch - and it is not.

it would be like Ford making a motorcycle without a left indicator (and the right one only working from time to time)

So being a gigantic PHONE manufacture - Nokia sets expectations that their products with PHONE functions have a certain degree of pedigree and the Phone part should be up to par with their other phone enabled products. Since it is not - Nokia N900 gets a lot of flag - and it should get a lot of flag.

I have travelled through 7 airports during Christmas - and all the airports had GIGANTIC adverts for the N900. Mentioning both Phone part and Mobile Computer part. But clearly directed at end users and as and end user device. I don't think ANYONE would think the device was not a super Nokia phone device - and none of the adverts mentioned "Powered By Linux", "Maemo Platform" or "This is NOT SYMBIAN and NOT FOR CASUAL user"

So again if the are any misunderstandings about the N900 - they are due to Nokia advertising. Not end users who mistakenly might be led to buy the device.

My previous post jogged a memory, and since this is largely a philosophical discussion rather than a practical one, i'll digress. I once heard Nolan Bushnell (Pong, Atari) speak in a fairly informal academic setting, and he (who was a colleague/partner/competitor with Steve Jobs and other early PC industry names) made the point, based on his own experiences, that a meritocracy is hard to sustain because the people busy doing things are not the people spending time campaigning for position. The pointy-haired types float to the top.

Trying to bring it back to the subject, the moral is that the more you dilute your population with unproductive members, the more likely they are to control what goes on.

Ok, no one is paying attention, but I will once again state my opinion.

It is a mistake to make plain vanilla users jump thru a bunch of hoops to report problems. Just like it was a good idea to develop the greeters program, it would be good to get volunteers to look thru threads and report what users are saying. Bugzilla is used by many benighted developers as an excuse to ignore problem reports that have some merit.

In fact, the current regime has been developing its own style -- make people jump thru a bunch of hoops before expressing an opinion, making a proposal, or reporting a bug. Then filter it thru a bunch of preferably elaborate and mathematical filters and don't take it seriously until all the weathervanes line up and point in a direction acceptable to the regime.

This creates a slow bureaucracy, and it is odd that many participants in this process actually claim to hate bureaucracy.

In case you weren't aware, there's a Brainstorm discussion about how to make the feedback systems such as Bugzilla much more user friendly.

I think people are more than well aware that Bugzilla is a bit of a brute to use. But that doesn't mean people shouldn't try.

Andre goes through the board regularly asking people to be more specific about problems.

"It doesn't work" or "It sucks" is not a fixable problem. The serious interface problems (say ovi maps or MfE) are already well documented. The lesser known bugs that people are encountering need to be in a format of "When I do this, I expect that and I actually get the other" combined with "I have this, this and this installed on my phone" (Needed to track conflicts) To pretend that people can fix something sight unseen from a "It doesn't work" report is unrealistic.

If your car doesn't work, you don't ring the garage and say "make it go!" - you take it in for them to examine. If your n900 doesn't work you can't take it to a neighbourly dev for them to examine - you have to do the examination and report the outcomes if you want a response.

That's not about making people jump through hoops. It's asking them to provide the information needed to identify a problem. Alternatively, people could just post their n900s to a nokia centre (or friendly dev) who would take a look.

Hmm...



Works... Doesn't work... Works... Doesn't work... Works...

Regarding Bugzilla, Brainstorm and similar.

There are some things I would want to vote for, or come up with alternative problem descriptions or improvement descriptions for.

Now, I wouldn't mind figuring out which bugs/improvement suggestions I'd consider worthy my vote. I have often followed links to bugzilla, and had an opinion or suggestion. I have however, not had a user account there.

I'd have to create not one, but two new accounts for this. One for Bugzilla, one for Brainstorm.

I only ever create a new account anywhere when I really have to. Techically It'd be easy to create one. Two seconds.

But having three accounts on *.maemo.org? I'm sorry. That's just silly.

I do realize in this case there are organizational and technical challenges with binding these three quite separate entities/subcommunities together under one user database. But until that happens, I will probably only ever nod and/or shake my head at the suggestions in Brainstorm.

One thing that strikes me is how the conversational maturity has plummetted across the board in the past few months. Some here predicted that but I still have to wonder: are a bunch of 11 year olds actually buying expensive N900s, or are there just too many adults that never grew up and learned to play well with others?

This isn't meant to slam anyone who doesn't fit the description... so if you find yourself getting defensive, think about why.

What is interesting is that one would think that the majority of N900 buyers are N8xx owners and therefore up to speed on Maemo 4/5 OS. Instead it appears that most N900 buyers on this forum are smartphone owners and do'nt even know what it means "to flash".
(pun not intended).

To get back to your point, Texrat, the N900 buyers probably don't realize that all of us N770, N800, N810 owners have spent the last two years tweeking our devices while being educated by this fine forum.

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Again, I suspect that's a faulty perception. Those are the users making most noise, starting most threads, asking most questions. The previous tablet owners are quieter.