Ok my Alternatives sticky draft is here.

Excellent! Thank you.

"Alternatives Forum: PLEASE READ"

Since the usrs are already in the Alternatives forum, could it be more useful to stress the name of the main alternatives already in the subject? e.g.

"Android, Debian, KDE, Mer, Palm OS, Ubuntu & other alternatives lovers: PLEASE READ"

Or something.

The text is very good. The only thing I would add is a link to the general guidelines, as we are doing in the rest of stickies.

Gah! I'm locked out of my own post; I can't edit it anymore...

EDIT: By the way, do I get extra points for drafting the text on my tablet while waiting in the Emergency department of Children's Hospital with my daughter? (Don't worry, she's fine. Toxic Synovitis is scary looking and sounding, but it is fairly harmless)

Ah yes, only moderators can edit titles of threads, even you own. What is the exact title you want?

Also, have you considered becoming a moderator? :roll:

Happy recovery for your daughter!

Subject edited.

btw I have moved your formal request to the Moderators thread (to make it even more formal) and PB's post and your response to the thread it belongs to.

Note that moderators need to pay special attention to stick on topic in threads. :P

I actually liked my original subject, but you're the Super-Moderator

I whole heartedly agree with SD69 and qole on the bumping old threads bit. Multiple threads on a topic make search results a mess and "no bumping" sort of contradicts "search before posting" anyway. The whole bumping, cross posting, thread jacking, and thread dumping (crapping) thing can be covered by the posting guidelines. That is, posts should be relevant not only to the title but the discussion in the thread at the time.

You pro'ly will need more moderators but their powers can be restricted to assigned forums. You have a good crew now and I hope you have a private place to discuss things forum related because you’ll need it. If you do, I don’t want to know about it because I believe regular maemo.org members don't need to know a lot about the inner workings. I believe there should be a certain "man behind the curtain" mystery to how things are done and that includes how new moderators are chosen. It should be after careful observation of posting habits and temperament. The candidate(s) should be contacted via PM and it should not be part of a publicly aware recruitment drive imho.

This forum should be one of the gateways to the maemo.org community and not the other way around. That is, the maemo.org community should not be used or viewed by the public as a gateway to the administration of this forum.

Also (and I know the sound of this will rub people the wrong way but please hear me out and imagine the results before lighting the torches) what ever is posted in these forums should become the property of these forums and that bit should be part of a new member agreement at sign up.

This will end the "My thread" mentality and the overly possessive sense of ownership some have for pet causes or posted information. Moderators need to be able to move, merge, split, edit, and soft delete threads and their contents in order to fulfill the owners mission and/or administrators directives.

If the owner is a collective then its mission is for the collective good. We should all accept that and not jump so quickly to change whenever an individual disagrees with that belief.

Speaking of sticky drafts, who volunteers writing the ones needed for the Maemo 5 and the N900 forums? They are getting plenty of mislocated new threads these days.

Sorry about that qgil... my response may have seemed to veer somewhat from the intended purpose of this thread. I have a job that pulls me away from a desktop sometimes for 10 or 12 hours at a time. I think others may have as well... ( that was one of the attractions of the NIT in the first place. )

Just writing a sticky does not prevent mis located threads and the like, threads still need active moderation. The sticky does provide a moderator with a platform to stand on so that changes can be made. Feelings will still get hurt sometimes and one member can still reek havoc on the board as a whole in a relatively short period of time.

Stickies do promote more community involvement in policing the unproductive or exploitive behaviors of other members. It gives regular members somewhere relevant to point or refer to in responses.

I believe we touched on this before when discussing "organic growth" verses traffic control divisions when expanding the forums. I was thinking then as now, new or additional forums may become problematic without new or additional moderation.

Another thing that could be considered is providing moderators with a seperate account for moderation. Something with generic user names along the lines of moderator 1, 2, or 3... (if requested).

This will help prevent a "Peter principle" among membership where a former prolific, amiable, and entertaining poster becomes a moderator and because of his/her new duties; becomes less prolific, amiable, and entertaining. The member and the membership both end up with something less than disireable and everyone becomes somewhat worse for wear.

I'm not tring to hijack this thread to promote more moderation BTW. I am just trying to point out that writing a sticky for a forum may imply to some that the writer is somehow that forums new moderator (or ring leader ).