I may have something to add on the helping newcomers part. I bought my NIT just a month ago (fell absolutely in love with it), and personally have never met with the hostility many of you have mentioned on these posts. I have seen it happen, tho. And it's discouraging. Although I know large parts of this forum are directed to people with a lot more knowledge than me, I think I can include myself in the "engaged users" section. And even though I feel most of the Council's deliberations and decisions are way over my head, I see how they affect me and my user experience. And that, ultimately, they should be aimed at making the NIT experience more pleasurable for people like me and those with even less knowledge than me. At least that's my humble opinion.

But on the other hand, I know how we can get angry at people over things that shouldn't bring up so much anger. I've been trying to help the Brazilian NIT user community (which has probably grown by a few hundred users in a very short time because of a very good bargain on the N800 here) with the basics, and I honestly want to punch some brains into some people sometimes . The way they ask for help, their laziness in googling the silliest of things, that guy who keeps insisting on trying to run his N-GAGE GAMES on his NIT... ugh, don't even get me started.

But I have been patient with the quick reply button in Orkut (it's really huge in Brazil ), I have refrained from lashing out, I have kept my patience, and I have been rewarded. People come to thank me personally (though I haven't got any gifts yet) and I can see it encourages people to try and do more by themselves. And I believe that is something invaluable for a niche with such a small user-base like the NITs. It's essential that we make newcomers feel welcome, and except for an episode on freenode (which has nothing to do with this), I have been met with nothing but friendliness from the users here (even though the only help I could really give was on how to correctly pronounce "Maemo" ).

So I see Texrat's point. This is, indeed, a big deal. It's more than just "caring too much about the little things" and acting out on frustation. It's about bringing NIT users (engaged or not) all the good things it can do for them. So let's see more of canola, the flipclock, liqbase, Tear, and all those projects that people other than developers can fall in love with (not that there's anything wrong with developing power tools for advanced users, please let me put this right up). I want to see it happen. I want to see the changes in the Application Manager that have been outlined, I want to see an easier way to stream/transcode videos from my Windows box (something simple, quick, to the point), yes, Windows box, because A LOT OF USERS have them. Why not focus on those things, on how to make me better at bragging about my N800 to the people I know? Couldn't that feed the 'Hunger'? I know it sounds selfish, but honestly, fulfilling needs like those I mentioned would make a HUGE difference to the end users. It's what made the Iphone such a huge success, even though it's worse, weaker and more expensive than my N800 in every single way I can think of it.

I hope I'm not totally off-the-mark here, and am sorry if I am. Like I said, complete noob here. Just thought the whole post was worth some unbiased (to the possible level of course) remarks. I know nobody from Nokia, no moderators, not even many users, actually. I just thought the forum could use some outside perspective on all this.

Again, sorry if I missed the point.

No no, Bobbe, you spoke accurately and eloquently, right in line with my thinking.

THANK YOU!

The hard part is only the first ten or twenty years. Afterwards it gets more relaxed :-)

Isn't the problem you mention the same with every forum and community ?

I don't believe that Maemo community, even if it is somewhat specific, will escape this fact that many people will be rude from time to time, will not respect you as much as you would like ... And eventually some members will start stupid fights just because they like to fight about ... oh well, pretty anything not so significant.

About the big picture of Maemo community ... yes, it's more than just helping, resolving issues, because of the OS developpment part ... you're right ... and this is mabye the major quality of our NIT ...

Anyway, as this part of the project is still community-driven, the rules of internet communities still apply, be coutious, protect yourself, especially if you are sometimes sensitive (sensitivity is a quality too).

Is there really a feeling that the "maemo.org crowd" and the "ITT crowd" are distinct and separate? That somehow the maemo.org crowd are inflicting things on ITT people without taking into account opinions? That would be unfortunate, and certainly far from the way I see this community.

To me, the maemo.org mailing lists, Garage projects, web site, IRC channel, wiki and ITT/Talk are all different facets of the same community. Most of the council came into Maemo prominence through ITT, didn't they?

It would be interesting to get a general karma count for Talk forum members, in particular to see if the Talk regulars are elligible to vote or not (and if not, why not). I think that we will probably find that there are more elligible voters and candidates active on Talk than not active on Talk.


A tiny number of people? 170 people, out of an electorate of 700 valid voters. Yes, I would have liked to see a bigger turnout. ITT thanks were included in the karma count before the last election, a substantial portion of the electorate was active on ITT. So I don't see how you can call it a coup.

In addition, the council didn't have anything to do with the ITT -> Talk move, the addition of new moderators, or restyling Talk. So even if you're happy to think of ITT as "us" and maemo.org or the council as "them", how has the ITT community been affected by the Maemo Community Council election?

Dave.

Wll I understand your perspective as a new member, those that have been here 2-3 years may have a different perspective. Well I agree that rude people are everywhere. I think Texrat (and the community as a whole) expect more from people purported to represent the community.

That's the part some seem to get hung up on, totololo included. In fact as long as we remain stuck on that particular aspect I don't think this dialog is going anywhere...

Hmmm ... maybe i missed something ?

Were you really insulted by council members ?
In such a case, you deserve apologies from that/these member(s). Nothing more, nothing less.

But maybe you just FEEL you were insulted, and in that case, you should just talk with that/these member(s) with private messages to settle the problem.

Same if you were just disappointed by some of their decisions.

Totololo, your input is appreciated, but it would help more if you had a better grasp of the scope.

You seem to be assuming your experience represents the only experience. It isn't merely about a couple of council members insulting a few posters here-- it's about a growing degree of hostility expressed toward some contributors who have different perspectives.

So it would help if you would get past this "we're all just talkers in a random forum" mentality and try to understand that these are people who code, test and otherwise support a software platform... and some are being marginalized. In addition, nastiness from council members carries an air of authority even IF those representatives have no real power.

And while I've had my run-ins (unresolved via PMs), again: this isn't about me. I'm reporting on a disturbing trend that affects the community.

I am a good example of this. Until the elections, I was not subscribed to any mailing lists, nor do I frequent the IRC channel(s). Pretty much the only way anyone could know anything about me (other than my Easy Debian download page on maemo.org) is through ITT. It would seem that I was elected almost purely because I am known here, on these forums.