I get the impression people aren't sure what to do with Nokia-but-not-specifically-maemo threads, which many of these are. Could we have a general 'Nokia' forum or sub-forum?

That, young man, is how babies are made.

Why doesn't General work? I'm genuinely curious.

There seems to be a feeling that 'general'='general maemo'. I've seen people complained at for starting Nokia threads there and the mods seem to move them out. If that's where they belong (which would work for me) then make it obvious.

There's also been an assumption of late that anything remotely light-hearted belongs in off topic. The 'n900 is for real men' thread is an example. This was not so even a couple of months ago. I find it sad, but suspect it's a reaction to comments about Noise.

I have moved a few of those myself. It's a problem with the current structure of the forum. N900 is supposed to be a hardware forum, Maemo 5/ Fremantle is a platform/OS forum, and there are fora for competitors and etc.

Many if not most of the threads started in N900 don't really fit the currently defined description of the N900 forum, and thus get moved. I'm not just referring to my own actions here, i'm talking about all the mods.

For whatever reason, most of them don't get moved to general. I guess it's because the definition of what goes in general is ambiguous.

So, as i said, this is a problem with the structure of the forum. Perhaps a "lighthearted" subforum would be useful? That, or a consensus that the million unuseful N900 topics that are nevertheless nominally about the N900 should go in General.

I thought Offtopic was the "lighthearted" forum... :-)

Well, that's why i move those there.

Lol what we actually need is "Flame Nokia Here" forum.. That would clear out about 80% of the kind of "off-topic" Threads from Maemo Talk...

It really is true.

Actually, Texrat proposed a "Complaints" subforum that would serve as the resting place for threads like that, unless the complaint turns out to be specific and accurate and constructive, in which case they could then be moved to the appropriate forum. I think it's an excellent idea.

Please don't think I'm criticising the mods! You have a heck of a task with the way this place has exploded population-wise.

But I do think the forum strucutre could be made clearer about what belongs where. In fact, greater clarity might take some of the strain off mods. I know some of that is under discussion in the Brainstorm forum - ways of adhusting the forum so that people know what goes where.

For example, when I was Very New, there was a thread in General titled "Iphone is for girls" and I countered with "n900 is for girls" (which actually proved a very useful thread that came up with the idea for the mirror app!) Now, however, we have a discussion about the dimensions of n900 under the title of 'n900 is for REAL men' which the poster clearly felt belonged in Off Topic as it was lighthearted.

Some things are obvious: a pie-throwing thread (or in this place more likely a pi-throwing thread) would be Off topic. But threads about Nokia seem homeless. So do 'general chat' type threads about n900, being neither hardware nor software. Perhaps the mods could get together in that secret forum of theirs and decide what belongs where, and then ask Reggie to change the forum descriptions to be as obvious as possible.