Rules of behaviour shift this problem but do not eradicate it, in my experience. It leads to 'lawyering' - people following the letter, but not the spirit of the law, and manipulating those rules in their favour against others.

This sounds trivial, but is a very real problem. Wikipedia has some fine examples.

(on my n900, so please be patient if you want a reply.)

i agree!
I wonder if it's too soon to campaign for the return to iTT?

Then please respect the thread closures, temp bans and other moderating activities lately. They're NOT being done lightly. There ARE rules being broken, repeatedly. It is NEVER based solely on opinion. If you see severe action, then there's severe history behind it. Every single time.

I can't make that any clearer.

At least it gives the moderators something to do with the threads. They stay off active topics which many people follow. If you have a complaint, you have someplace to vent it. Mods will still deal with the same asshats but they will stay out of our way. Mods can ban users who create a second complaint thread outside of the correct area.

They can still close threads going terribly bad, but for the most part it should allow for more tolerance in discussions.

One way or another, for this organization/forum to survive the growth of MeeGo, it WILL need to be redefined to some extent. How that manifests is hard to say right now. But it does need to be discussed, continually, and I believe there are already some threads dedicated to that...

I can see that both have been big contributors, but when I leave, I leave.

Well, not to add any controversy, but not ALWAYS (see the "Meego in N810" thread)

Texrat, I just don't agree with some of the thread closures, perhaps if they stopped being closed, they would have some place to go instead of keep creating new ones which is even worse. over and over again, If I learned nothing from orangebox, Stop feeding the trolls.

Please understand I like you have been here a long time. I am saying, what your doing, it AINT working.

Nothing personal, but as a community lets come up with some creative ways to deal with this.

Tex I am sorry if you felt I was attacking you. I hope you really understand this was not my intent. It truly was not.

My personal opinion is that too many people shout in both directions with loud voices and drown out the real issues, be they praise or criticism for Nokia, Maemo (or predecessors) or the N900.

Moderators can't step in without being accused of various things and even if not, they invariably can't fairly monitor everything and are still subject to just plain old getting it wrong - they are only human after all.

My suggestion to improve this situation would be two-fold:

First, a little maturity from everyone! Just because you don't agree with someone it does not mean they are a "troll" or "fanboy". If we could all stop using those wretched terms that'd be a great start. There is also never any call for swearing at people and hurling insults at them - never ever, we all have the capacity to calmly or energetically use our intelligence to discuss in an adult manner.

It should ALWAYS be remembered that it IS easier to say nothing and move on to another thread or website than it is to come on and simply hurl abuse at someone. Clicking "Thanks!" on comments like that is no better either (and still more effort than not doing it!).

Secondly, I think that there is an enormous opportunity for an intelligent community driven moderation system on here. I don't believe for one minute that the people who always call "troll" or "whiner" or whatever are any better than those who come here simply to post inflammatory remarks. We don't however any mechanism to say "No Thanks!" to a post and so it seems you only ever get those ready to wade in on a supposed "troll" who get the thanks. There are so many occasions where I've wanted a negatory option for people who do just that sort of thing - it is not enough to simply thank the posts you do agree with as this skews it, one might not even agree with the OP.

A simple three button system of "Thumbs Up", "Thumbs Down" and "Report This" would not only enable attention to be drawn to individual posts or threads which are abusive, but could serve as a real measure of public feeling both ways and even use some basic stats to fade out or reduce the importance of the thread or post. Continued negative marks could automatically alert moderators to a user.

I know karma is hardly a new concept on forums but it could certainly make this place a nicer community and ease the burden on moderators.

I think now is the moment.

Where else can you find a higher concentration of tablet fans/supporters online? Just about all other forums started off from smartphone/mobile phones origin.

All these 'x vs y' and opinionated posts can be seen as good indication that the forum attracts a wider audience than it is designed to cater in the first place and those people may not have a better 'home' elsewhere. But with the current forum structure, they may be relegated to the rants district. ps: I'm talking not talking about the s-hats, but the polite ones which are not pro-n900. I'm sure you can recall a few.

To wait for MeeGo to gain momentum and till the absolute deadline of our contract here... I think it'll be too late by then...