Looking from inside-out-in I have to say that the exchange between Ricky's posts and his respondants points to exactly what Maemo will have to manage to do... and from a marketing perspective, this will be hard and key most for the platform's aspirations.

Whether anywhere *native* here wants to admit it or not, the mindset of interacting within this community begins and matures as the person becomes more familiar with a developer mindset. Yes, its possible to not be a developer and very much enjoy this community, I am a testimony of that. But that doesn't take away from the fact that towards anything short of a Type-A, Prosumer, you'd have some issues here, and its totally social, not technological.

That being said, my recommendation earlier that more consumer-oriented Maemo blogs be shuttled t o a portal page that is edited by an editor or two here would be benefical for that reason. Nokia will - in time - funnel more people here. They would be very smart to do so. But this community has to evolve to where developer-oriented discussions don't turn away those looking for analyst-based or consumer-based inquires.

That's more a cause of community maturity than anything else. In terms of how Nokia is positioning itself as a leader in using open source technology in an arena its not been before, they would be wise to utilize their already strong customer-facing personas to help that along.
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Not that it needs to be said (again), but those members of Maemo who have significant prominence either through time here or some aspect of community leadership position have to be very careful in responding to items like Ricky's. Whether you care or not, you speak a lot louder and a lot more effectively than Nokia. When you fly nearly off the cuff, it begs the question of why a strong brand like Nokia would allow such people leadership positions in a multi-faceted community.

Not saying that your rebukes are wrong (GA et al), but that you have to be mindful that you (as a group) carry a lot of the Nokia brand with every post that you make.

Such power endears maturity of responsibility, as well as wiser words.

I can't disagree with you. I'm guilty of it myself earlier in the thread.

When you've been a part of something for as long as some of us have been in Maemo, it's easy to find yourself more emotionally involved than maybe you should be. Snap reactions happen. Lines are drawn and sides are taken and drama ensues... when really, we're all on the same team here.

Obviously, there's a lot of excitement and tension going on around here lately... a lot of questions unanswered and such... let's chill.

Like it or not, bloggers will feed the success of this platform.

If they are incorrect, they need to be corrected. And I don't think there's any need to dance on eggshells, either-- I'm on record as supporting the many "please search before posting" admonitions that have ruffled some feathers here.

BUT: as ARJWright said, those of us choosing to take positions of leadership need to acknowledge that such a move brings on responsibility. We are ambassadors, not dictators. We should be diplomats, not character assassins.

In this case, Ricky was wrong on details and in my opinion wrong to rush to judgment about the hardworking developers. His rekindled passion got the best of him. But I know him well enough by now (we occasionally meet socially) to know that he is a decent guy and does want to learn. And I ask in this particular case that the community trust me: I am working with him and will have no problem whatsoever disabusing him of misguided notions when I'm aware of them.

Let's make the N900 the success we want it to be. Let's be amabassadors.

Does coming to t.m.o as it stands now accelerate the new user towards understanding/contributing to Maemo moreso than a more kid gloves approach?

I think we have to understand that until this moment, most of the people that would come here were interested in contributing or at least being a power user whereas the next wave might never have the desire to be anything but an end user.

What do we do about this?

Do we try to keep the end users away and keep this place more of a developer-centric forum by starting up a new place for them to go to? Do we try to integrate them into the community at the risk of losing the developers? Do we start a separate place specifically for developers?

What do we want?

Adding the phone layer really changed the game. I'm not sure this community as it exists today is ready for the consequences.

EDIT: to zerojay's point about customer differentiation-- I think it's inevitable, and I believe that's part of Quim's original thoughts.

While this site may never turnaround to become mostly end-user focused (and I hope it doesn't) we still need to think about what sort of initial face is presented, and provide the necessary conduits to route end users to the most helpful destination(s).

I would totally put these questions to Nokia's marketing arms, social networking, and Maemo community leaders. Its here that a vision for this type of engagement needs to be addressed.

And its totally going to cause problems for everyone. This isn't an easy set of questions by any means.

I can vouch for that! I am working to at least start the thought process in my summit presentation, and I gotta tell ya, there have been a few nights I felt like a dog chasing its tail...

I want exactly what GAN described: this site to be the interesting place.

Of course, "interesting" is a purely subjective work, but I hope you all currently present in this site know which "interests" have keep us all here.

There are lots of sites with examples of how to do this. Reggie has lots of experience: today I discovered he founded ClieSource (this means I've nearly spent half my life browsing forums founded by Reggie ). 1src was the prime example of an "interesting" site with both newbie users and über-gurus (the kind who end up as vmware employees doing low-level stuff, I hope all of you who followed 1src know who I'm talking about), all of them establishing useful conversations. Nearly all of the last PalmOS developments came from 1src.

Most of the Linux video game consoles sites are also good examples.
But I don't like them for a reason: developers there usually provide videos or screen shots of their "accomplishments" instead of source code. This happens because usually there are around 3 developers for each 300 users, and the formers usually talk using IRC or email, so, why publish the source code? Nobody is ever going to try to build it. Now upload a video, even for code you're never going to release, and you're going to get lots of "aahs" and "oohs".

Unfortunately, it's very hard to find the right balance in the devs vs users ratio, and even harder is to actually _move_ it. This is why I'd prefer a conservative, slow approach to the whole issue. I find it evident the balance in this forum is currently biased to the developer side, but slowly going to the user side (faster on the last few days, with "free energy" discussions already appearing).

Ideally, nobody would start the "Maemo-noobs.org" forum, but I know that's going to happen. If the N900 is a hit, even currently phone/iphone/pda-oriented regional forums are going to become established centers of N900 "newbie" users. So I find no need to promote these; they will appear either way.


To sum it off (since I have to go to bed): do nothing. Most devs will probably remain here, along with the "elevated" user base (for a start, those who care enough to speak english). The more hardcore devs are already absent from here, and limit themselves to the mailing lists. And the larger user base will find its way on a forum where 400px long signatures are allowed.

(Curiously enough, this situation reminds me of the PalmOS situation:
Palm mailing-lists: core devs, hard core OS questions.
Unknown Palm channel I didn't seen: commercial devs
1src: most app devs, and most interesting "discoveries" being done there. some users too, both educated and "non-educated"
"regional"/"in-your-language" generic PDA forums: news were usually relayed from 1src, mostly users, a few developers in between.
)

If Maemo and related devices are successful then it's inevitable (and actualy cool) that all kinds of sites start popping around. Some of them pushed by pure fans, some of them by pure business, some of them with a mixture of both. Some of them generic, some of them specialized in certain topic, language or region.

Nokia does not feed nor stop this proliferation. We have two obvious entry points: maemo.nokia.com for users and Forum Nokia for developers.

Then there is maemo.org, a community driven site devoted to community collaboration. Nokia is involved as well in maemo.org, as community members. maemo.org is the place where a user can join one day and end up 2 years later receiving a prototype for development or review before sales start, getting an invitation as Maemo community speaker at Nokia World or interviewing a Nokia VP on stage in the main room of the Maemo Summit. Plus 1001 other ways of learning, contributing, make maemo products better and make the Maemo community a better place to be.

The obvious entry points of maemo.org are Downloads, Talk and News. I believe Brainstorm can be the 4th leg of this platform of engagement. The lower and simpler access they provide to regular maemo users, the better to everybody.

There are ways to do this and at the same time keep happy (or even make happier) the core community contributors e.g. extras-testing/devel, a potential MaemoDevel tag in (micro)blogs and news, a deeper concentration in the Maemo 5 OS and Development subforums, a deeper involvement brainstorming solutions beyond voting... long etc.

As long as maemo.org keeps being "the interesting place", other Maemo related sites will keep referring to it in their work. Following everything is difficult already now for someone working full time in Maemo. maemo.org itself has ways to distil top downloads, top news, top discussions... but still it's useful that people with a focus on something go and showcase / translate / summarize / illustrate / frontally attack their own area of interest to their own readers or members.

A percentage of those readers / members will grow their knowledge and interest in Maemo, and if maemo.org accomplishes well its role they inevitably will come here with fresh brain, blood and hands willing to get more involved.

And something very important to keep in mind: these "new" people interested in Maemo these days are highly important for the success of Maemo (and maemo.org, I'd say) beyond its natural boundaries within the Linux and open source communities. Many people is getting enthusiastic about new aspects in maemo, and this is extremely good. Many people is actually no newbie but quite expert, only not in Maemo until now.

Said all this... we have big trust and confidence that the current Maemo community will handle this transition and growth. These days the expectations around Maemo 5 and the N900 are growing to high levels (sometimes even too high for my taste). Following people's comments there outside, they also have big expectations on this community.

Exciting times, indeed.

Very well said...

Reinforcing that enthusiasm in some way is what keeps people coming back.