For one, opinions abound on how the first premise should take shape. I'm not sure we've ever had a clear member majority consensus on how the structures should look.

And I never said anything about avoidance, silvermountain, so please don't start with straw men, thanks. My point is that, ultimately, searching and subscribing may have the best overall value. But that's just an opinion and I find them pointless to debate very long.

I've always been a search kindof person, this forum is no different in that respect.

I've said (or did I just think it) before that the present N900 thing will bring a lot of new people in, all with different needs and wants. What I think would be a shame is that there becomes an 'us and them' attitude regarding N900 vs NITs. I truly believe each can learn from the other, regardless of what applications run on what devices.

For my part, I'll be getting an N900 real soon (it seems) but you'd have to pry the N810 from my cold dead hands, it's that useful to me. I intend to make the best use of each that I can. That includes searching through the forum and paying attention to what makes sense to me in context.

The vast majority has the potential to be a huge boost and boon to the Maemo community, whatever device they may own. You will find that the current furore over release will die down, and I'd suggest that many of the posters will go on to something else (The next droid or whatever).

The ones that hang around, I think, should be courted and encouraged to contribute to all areas of the forum.

If we do it like how Ubuntuforums.org does it with having the TC set the OS version used then maybe you could also add a filtering system so it hides all threads with the n900 tag (not tags like anyone can add now)

Lol, you tell me how suggesting to search and use subscriptions is not avoiding a solution when we're discussing that a forum site is becoming useless (for people that prefer to browse categories and new posts) due to not enough structure and/or sub-forums?

"lol" all you like, but you're committing a logical fallacy.

Pointing out that ultimately search + subscribe may be the most useful approach does not ipso facto mean that no changes at all should be made. No mutual exclusion between those two premises whatsoever.

Try harder.

I like the idea of restructuring talk but I would offer two comments on the OP. First, games are just another application (ditto multimedia). I would merge them. Second, remembering my experience as a new user (of the N810), the terminology here is, at best, confusing. My N810 runs Maemo 4, OS2008, or Diablo, depending on who's posting. I would suggest the titles of the forums reflect the hardware as well as software. For example: Maemo 4 (N800, N810), Maemo 5 (N900), Maemo 6 (future development). I would also suggest that a better hierarchy for new users would be hardware at the top with app and hardware forums at the next level.

Generally, users post to the first likely-looking forum in a list, starting at the top. Meanwhile, as time goes on, and the N900 grows less new and strange, there will be fewer and fewer discussions that are specifically about it. Most discussion will revolve around applications that happen to run on the N900 or Maemo 5 that happens to run on the N900.

For that reason, I prefer to see a general structure of:

1. application-related forums
2. operating system-related forums
3. hardware-related forums

I would make a big cut. Separate Forums at the Top level. Active Topics for N900/Maemo5 and Maemo4. We will get thousands of new users. All the old information will just confuse them. Step 4 of 5 was BIG and leaves Steps 1-3 in the dust (sorry, my dear N800 and n810 :-)

Some of the older threads for previous NITs still contain useful things that can carry over between devices, i have already answered most of my questions for the N900 just from old threads so perhaps some threads coulde be somehow made relivant for all devices? just a sujestion.

Another thing personaly i would find usefull would be kind of theasourus for the search function, i think that it may help noobs like me find what there looking for that may be writen in thecnical terms.

One final thing which may be an improvement, when using this forum i find i mostly navigate using the new posts bar at the right (im sure im not the only person) this causes me to loose track of threads im interested in because things change so fast here. but whilst having somewhere for new posts perhaps have some where for threads you have viewed or been following that have unread posts.

Just some ideas.
cheers

Actually, I think that if things here are reorged then it needs to be done a lot differently than what's proposed

Use the tags, not specific categories.
Group the tags categories in the same manner that the current categories are kept.
Subject befitting multiple categories will appear in that area.
Make it a requirement that the major tag-category group is identified when a user creates a thread (there should be very few of these); or the requirement that there needs to be one major tag-category

For example:
Topic: Gimme New Games for my N800
Tags: N800*, games, puzzles

* is the primary tag category since its the first one there; will appear under the N800 area on a portal-like page

Reorg solved; search improved; usablity increased