Quite frankly, they got away with it in the past. 770 wasn't supported by OS2008, n800 nor n810 are supported by Maemo 5.

The problem is that stats have proven them right. 770 sold a few, n800/n810 sold more, n900 sold a lot more.

Why change a formula that works? (not that I agree with it)

Also, I got another Idea. Other than the Quarantine Category and voting System.

The questions about the n900 are usually what spiral into flame wars. They virtually are the same and quite common. Most are even answered in the Wiki. So we can copy past from there into this super thread.

An FAQ Thread with very common and Specific Questions in the first post. No posting is allowed in that. So the info doesnt get lost. Mods or/and those who are willing to help can add the questions and answers as they arise. (suggestions by pm only)

Things Like:

Can I search Email?
Yes. with this app:.,.....

Can I use USSD?
Yes. after 1.2

Can I have threaded sms?
Yes with this app

Can I search contacts by styping?
Yes slide out the keyboad and type..

You get my drift?

Edit: So if anyone asks. is the n900 this is it that. we slap that thorough feature thread link there without saying a word. No word, No flame. It'll of course be stickied and on top of all n900 related catogries.

It can have questions about anything from can I do this on the n900? to was the n900 made by aliens? You know all sortsa question HW and SW

Au contraire.

What I meant was, seeing a post from someone that uses "r" instead of "are" is a lot more forgivable for someone from -say- Tokio (which, in fact, I admire because it's harder to assimilate a language with different mnemonics) than, say, someone from the Devon region, who is surrounded by a pleasant round and clear English all his/her life.

I usually hold English-speaking countries residents at a higher standard. As I do in all other areas. I am more demanding of clarity and fact-checking from someone signing their post with an MVP than I am from someone who asks a question or simply offers an opinion.

It might well be discriminatory, but while it's understandable for a person to mix a few organs, especially if it's all new to them, I don't think it's fine for a medic to do so. It's not like it's an unforgivable mistake, they just don't start from zero like everyone else.

Personal preference. And I hold myself to this as well.

Maybe. But it's the only way to get a better wheel. Otherwise we'd all live in very nicely tuned caves. You do have a point, however, some of those mentioned sites have a system we could copy.

However, those are CONTENT sites. They publish articles, and allow people to offer two cents about it. Endgadget, e.g., only shows the first best 10 or so out of (sometimes) hundreds.

If we had that, we'd be squeaky clean.

A discussion forum can't have that. Our contents is our posts. Imagine Endgadget if it had no articles, but their pages contained free posts by the commenters.

The following reply is not directly aimed at you, even if quoted, but rather to all who think "so what" when I get stiffed by Nokia.

Dear sowhatters,

It so happens that I am a geek. An IT pro who is well versed in the art of current flowing in tiny bits. As a result, I am well liked (or needed) by my friends, coworkers, and a bunch of people I never met but who know of me.

As a result (and against all comics on the Internet), I am at the center of the said community when it comes to technology and people from all over come for advice.

My purchase of N900 has others linked to this decision. In fact, I have never ordered ONE N900. I have never been alone in owning a phone model, but always the first. Others come for advice and I recommend Nokia for its service, quality, uniform UI and assure them that throughout the decade or so I was a loyal customer, I have never had any major complaints.

I recommend phones based on how people work and use their devices, pairing them with the features they need and thus far everyone was happy.

Stiffing me loses not one customer, not one disgruntled fanboi that will come back tomorrow, but someone who is able to sway several other customers.

People who studied marketing know this to be "word of mouth" and the power it holds. And people who are any good in said marketing do all they can to maintain the aura of quality that surrounds their brand.

What Nokia has here is a small community of geeks, who are themselves leaders of opinion in their groups, who write articles, who have blogs, some who make corporate purchase decisions.

I am convinced that ignoring (or worse) the community here will not be good for Nokia.

I'm not saying it will die of because of a forum. I'm saying that while at the great rift's edge, you'd do well not to finger people who can push back.

Hmm, maybe that's what N900 Push means.

How is this different from a wiki (functionally speaking)?

ndi,
Thank you! This is something that some companies really do not get. Early adapters and enthus
iastic are the best marketers what they really can get. These people will do hours and hours of marketing job for free if they are treated right and listened. I do not mean that all requests should be fulfilled but communication...at least e.g. council in our case pays eventually. I have studied industrial management and marketing as minor and lately I have been face-palming quite much while watching what Nokia has been doing :| Or actually not doing. I´m starting to think that that company has huge management and organizational issues.*

I´m also some kind of central point around my friends when it comes to asking advice before buying new technology. Whether it be television, computers or gadgets they will ask me even though i really do not always know any better than them.


*This is just one of blogs what i follow but blog comments like this do not encourage me even thought they are from single people :| seeing too many of them makes me worry.
http://www.arcticstartup.com/discuss...Only-at-Nokia-

slender I agree with the comments in that article to some extent. It's somewhat ironic that a communications company can't or won't communicate with their users regarding their product. This is especially true for early-adopters, who are more likely to pay attention to company communications.

Then on the other side of the coin, Nokia gives us dates for releases and doesn't live up to them. Quite frankly I don't believe Nokia when they put a date out for a specific thing because history shows that they won't live up to it.

Nokia lost my trust bigtime with their constant delays and lack of communication with everything concerning the N900. A good company would never disappoint their customer this many times and not learn a thing from it.

The community support has been a refreshingly great experience for me however and it's one of the major attractions for getting a Meego handset over another. I'm just hoping HTC will make a Meego phone because those guys over at XDA are awesome too.

Hmm. Good Question. Well from experience. (I work in IT support, god help all who do).
1. People click on whats obvious, evident and familiar. Up there in Maemo.org. Talk has a Tab, but wiki is deeper in. So people are more likely to end up in the Forums, than in the Wiki.
2. Wikis are made in general comprehensive terms. People's "touch" is usually missing. So people will again tend to go the forums.
3. People tend to respond better to information presented in Question and Answer form. Specially if the questions are phrased in a similar manner to what occurs in their minds.

When I had my Xperia X1. I used to go to xda-developers all the time. For an entire year. I only made 2 posts because I simply found my answer in the first stickied (Non-Post) Super Thread for a given Topic.

Edit: Oh and almost NOONE uses the searching function. which is essential to find things in a structured wiki.

Thank you.

All valid points. Allow me mine:

1) If you don't search, you're dead. The FAQ for a N900 will be fifty miles long, as evidenced by the hundreds of posts of each release with tips and tricks, new functionality, rediscovered functionality, etc. I dare say I expect each release to have over 500 support posts. Add hardware, apps, fixes, etc.

2) It duplicates info. Actually, it triplicates it, since it's likely already in the forums. Someone will wiki it to make it a condensed, linkable, universal form. Then reposted. Also dupes all search results.

3) Items in Q-A form is quite inefficient, compared to a white-paper style of the wiki. The post would be even humongous-er.

Finally, it's hard to maintain an FAQ for a device this complex. Once you get past the first -say- 15 or so questions, you start getting into the deeper end, where you need to sort by importance, check for results yourself, etc.

People have this annoying habit of leaving a thread forever if they get an answer, so you never see if it really worked.

Not to say I wouldn't like the idea, but it's a lot of work and unlikely to help people, because of it's size. Also, needs to be maintained, voted, pushed. Trimming it would help, but then it would be of limited use.

Plus, if your aim is limitation of useless traffic, it only works in theory. We still get posts after info is in pinned threads, wiki, Google, even on a post above theirs.

However, if you feel like volunteering, I'll help too whenever I get free.

Or maybe, like the Ubuntu forums (where the aim is to share information), as soon as a problem has been resolved, it is marked as such and closed. No-one to hijack the thread, and indexed properly by Google and [enter search engine here].

Combine this with proper tagging and appropriate thread titles, and you end up with a good database of questions and (more importantly) answers.

What is required for this? Strict rules, in specific forums, that define how questions should be asked, and how moderators need (or should I say, are allowed) to work. Obviously these rules should only apply to specific forums, as I said, such as the N900-hardware forum, or application support.

Those forums don't exist, I hear you say? Well, that's another discussion then.

But just to give an idea about what I'm talking about: half the threads in Applications are app/update announcements. That forum is impossible to navigate. 'Nuff said.

You raise a good point. A while back I threw out the idea that maybe splitting these forums into separately-purposed ones might be the best overall solution for making purpose clear. The way I see it, Community/General/OffTopic could have been completely separate from Technical parts, maybe even just visibly. Of course, if the separation was truly physical that could cause thread management issues...