Indeed. I blog about the USB connectors falling out, and the views are astronomical, and number of comments respectable. Blog about community and council activity-- very few views and comments. I just didn't let it discourage me from running, but it is discouraging to me in general. : /

Given the steadily decreasing activity here in Community, I'm surprised the percentage drop wasn't larger (1.5% is statistically insignificant). I'm sure there's a correlation though.

Congratulations to the new council! I hope some of the unsucessful candidates can be persuaded to stand another time: we really did have a very strong field to select from.

As for greater voter engagment, I have a few thoughts but I believe I'll let them percolate for a little while before coming out with comments and suggestions. (Not least because both my brain and fingers are exhausted tonight!)

I look forward to what this new council can do for Maemo - and on into Meego.

I'll repeat here what I wrote this morning to cap off my nomination thread in the Community mailing list...


First idea! Pehaps we should revisit the decision to use the top bar of the forum page to direct forum users to non forum maemo.org sites. It was well intentioned but without SSO, we were effectively directing active forum contributors off the site. Perhaps the "community WiKi" should also be re-replicated on the forum "site" in order for that not to happen until the forum user is ready to commit.

In the end, apparently not as many forum members as was originally hoped for, got involved with maemo.org "the site". At the same time forum navigation links that normally occupy this top bar were reduced to a drop down menu making the forums that much harder to use.

Before this devolves, I said perhaps and I'm not "making of it what I will" my intentions I hope are the same as everyone else here.

At the same time I also realize that this is not the thread for this. However, where is the right thread for this? I got involved in the election process when I finally saw dneary's "nominations" thread 10 days after he opened it.

The thing is, in those ten days I was on the forum every day sometimes for hours. I only became aware of the thread when someone happened to post while I was on and the thread showed in the "Active Topics" sidebar. When I did follow the link I was alarmed to find that after 10 days only 2 people were nominated.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that a lot of what is posted here doesn't get seen unless it happens to be an "Active Topic" at the time any particular forum member is visiting. Part of the reason for that may be the lack of visible tools available for forum navigation. If a forum member goes to the top bar and clicks "community", perhaps he/she expects to be taken to the community sub forum. The same thinking might apply to the "news" top bar link and perhaps they expect to see forum announcements or other forum news.

If on the other hand this link as well as 5 of the 6 top bar navigation links takes them to a "site" that requires a new log-in or to register, perhaps they won't be a clickin' up there as often as we would like.

I know "Google" searches on other subjects have conditioned me to think "bogus" and move on if a results link I click on requires registration, or to "log-on in order to view the requested information". I know that all maemo.org information is available to all viewers regardless of registration, but perhaps this conditioning I speak of applies to other members, especially new ones none the less.

Up until now the focus has been on SSO... Perhaps it should be more on bringing the information back into the forum and making the forum more navigable instead. Most of the information may already be here, just finding it is the bear.

I know I should "Feel Free" to start my own thread on this subject however, if it is only going to me posting in response to me, and if it might take 10 days for someone else to find it, I kind of loose some motivation.

I believe a large part of the problem you cite, YoDude, stems from forum structure. Community should be the very first section (General next to last under Talk IMO), and new user introduction threads should all be located here, NOT under General. That funnels new users into a community-focused area, which should be the default "home" for forum-users.

That's an incredibly easy fix that for whatever reasons has never happened. The next steps become increasingly difficult (as some, like adding additional context to Active Topics, involve coding) but I believe structure is where to start.

I hope in a periodic, monthly?, Council's newsletter (or video news? to host on maemo.org in a visible position - not a forum thread or wiki page. Or why not a Council's blog?

"Visible" is relative though. Given that, every important message like a newsletter instance should be hosted one place, replicated to all.

EDIT: sorry for continuing the off-topic talk. The posts should be moved to "Ask the Council".

Congratulations for everybody but specially to Attila and Javier for bringing fresh brain to the Council. Renewal is a key factor in democracy.

A recommendation for the new Team: take your time agreeing on your prioritized agenda for the next six months, go for it and get the rest of us involved.

About participation: yes, bigger numbers and percentages are always nicer in democracy but what really counts is the final result. we had critical mass for 10 candidates and a promising elected team. the Maemo community can congratulate itself!

Looks like a good group of winners, though the one I favored most (and voted for) didn't win. But I don't see how by any stretch of the imagination a group of people that slightly more than ten percent of the people voted for can be considered "representative" by any definition, and to call the organization a "democracy" also seems far-fetched. It is more like a king's council.

Still, good luck.

My issue with the 'General' forum is that is has almost completely been taken over with n900 newbies asking very basic questions. I have to bite my fingers not to run through screaming "Search!" Moving it away from being the first forum at the top of the page might help. Or it might simply move all the n00bs into the Community forum.

Personally, I never rely on the 'active topics' bar until I've actually checked each forum that interests me. I think 'Active Topics' is only useful for the people who live here. The risk of missing something important is too high.

I said earlier I have some suggestions for increasing interest in the council: I'll try to get something posted, though probably not till tomorrow as it's a busy time of year.

Congratulations go to all elected members.

Looking at your discussion, I can see groups building up in this community.
1) The "original" (<5) maemo members
2) The "new" (N900) maemo members

In both these groups there are
a) experienced community users
b) hardware/software aware users (IT professionals) and
c) normal users otherwise known as "the rest of the world" (more so in the (2) group)

The challange now is to cater to all of theses groups without one group overrunning the other or even chasing valuable members away.
Without making it a closed community, with a steep "sign-up" curve.

Maybe a way would be where new members can only post in only certain topics/categories until reaching a minimal karma?

PS. For me it looks, like a shouting match on Active Topics. and maybe it should be removed?