Sorry, I'm just seeing a lot of hostility here... I was the one who posted this thread. It was completely my idea, no outside influence. I actually haven't seen any other threads talking about the Newbie forum and whether to keep it or not. I just saw that change was happening, and this was something, in my opinion, that should change. Don't be rude to qgil for discussing this. He even proposed his own solution. Now is the discussion, and then we try to find the best solution.

Also, the "No change" thing has been beaten to death. Can we please drop these petty arguments and get back on topic? If you don't like a proposal, and have reasons for that, state them, and they'll be considered just like every other opinion.

And, as has been said before, it basically comes down to what Reggie thinks is best. He's the one you have to convince, not us (however... convincing us doesn't hurt )

I never thought of you as a maemo guy (not that that's bad btw). And it seems you've seen the same increase in changes that I have.

I agree about the negative connotation with "newbie". The pre-purchase/beginner forum is more an attempt to categorize threads, than to constrain the conduct in the forum. (All forums should be nice to newbies.) the exact scope of the forum is not easy, but I don't see it as possibly being any more vague than the "general" forum. (A beginner/advanced justaposition makes more sense). My preference would be to say no command line stuff or anything that necessitates root access, but that's me. And there should not be reference material in there that other people (besides other beginners) would want to know about it. And of course this may all be moot...

I think the word "Newbie" is universal and self-explanatory; so, I'm not sure if "newbies" know what "pre-purchase/pre-device" means.

Also, I think having a newbie catch-all forum is okay. Again, I see it like baby in their crib --- where they do everything: eat, sleep, play, go potty (in diapers), etc. The crib is the catch-all for a human being, but as we grow into adults, we go into the kitchen for food, bathroom for potty, office for work, etc. Same thing for the "newbie" forum; do it all there for starters and then grow into using other specific forum sections.

To GeneralAntilles point, if the newbie forum is something that can't be agreed on, then we should look into a compromise. Maybe any newbie question need to include the tag "newbie". That way, the thread topic ends up in the right place, but users also see that it is newbie related.

BTW, OMG N8X0 IS BETTAH THAN TEH IPOD TOUCH!!!11!!one!!!

The problem with the catch-all Newbie forum is that some people never grow out of it. This thread, which talks about making an installable package (deb) for the tablets, was originally in the Newbie thread. It was then moved to the Development thread, a much more appropriate place. Most Newbies wouldn't know what a deb is, and care even less about how to package one.

Overall, the goal has changed from just removing the term "Newbie" to moving things where they belong and making every forum Newbie-friendly. I think SD69 also has a good suggestion: define very carefully what should be allowed in a "Beginners" forum: no command-line. The problem with that is a Newbie might not necessarily know that you have to use the CLI for something, and anyone would then be forced to answer the thread with "You can't do that," which doesn't help the new people learn and move on to the advanced forum.

This echos some of the discussion that took place when Tablet Scene was announced. We've since seen how segregating newbies to their own site turned out, and I wonder if that provides any lessons in terms of a separate newbie forum here.

YO!

As I was trying to say in my first post in this thread... for whatever reason, when a change is made, please announce it first. Leave the announcement up afterwords for awhile pretty please.

I read the original sticky and like a good soldier did as I was instructed. Unfortunately a change was made while I was doing my thing. Now there is no mention of the original instructions and I feel like I'm in an episode of the Twilight Zone.

(The back and forth bickering in the background BTW, gives it a Sydney Pollack kind of feel.)


For the record the "gateway" logic that I can no longer cite seemed sound to me. With all the changes lately it may have helped a mod by keeping new threads in one place. The author would then see where the mod moved it and perhaps learn enough to post in the correct forum the next time... So I was thinkin'

Perhaps an answer in that situation could be "You can't do that without using the command line (which is too advanced for beginners)" or to move the thread to the appropriate forum.

> Heck, even I would still use it to ask "newbie" questions safely without being flamed.

Not having a Newbie Safe Area forces all posters of all threads in all forums to be nice to newbies. Flames are bad no matter where and who is the target.

Actually I don't see this problem with flames to newbies here, and not even the other myth of answering newbies with command line instructions. Rude language is sometimes exchanged between members with hundreds of posts on their backs, and use of CLI (using acronym as pun intended) is shown mostly in threads that are clearly for advanced users, or to trigger a symptom or solution where no GUI will help anymore.

> Remember that newbies are more likely to ask first, read later.

Those would go to General (as a percentage already do) and from there we would redirect to the right place (as we are doing already).

> It's like expecting a baby to be an adult by...

You can turn this omelette by saying that there is plenty of places in the Internet that welcome huge amounts of newbies every day without the need of having a Newbie corner. They just have a good architecture able to make happy newcomers and regular users.

Real architecture had this problem too. First there were not buildings welcoming people using wheelchairs. Then they patched special accesses for weelchairs on those buildings. Now buildings of organizations caring about weelchair users are designed with common accesses making happy everybody.

> Babies instead need their crib to grow in first.

Maemo runs on devices targeted to heavy Internet users. This is the norm we can expect here.

> In it it said something to the effect that to think of the newbie forum as a "gateway"
> and that threads posted there will more than likely be moved later.

It was edited as a result of another discussion. Now it says

Which is more or less the same.

> When do you expect most of this reorganization to be complete...

It could be done pretty fast if there would be a benevolent dictator pushing the changes without discussing much. But this is not the situation we have, so we are discussing here the changes giving the chance to anybody to have a say.

The more we discuss the more it will take to complete the changes. This is a known handicap of participative systems.

> what about compromising by moving it to a stickied thread in General?

Not very useful compromise in my opinion. Offering the General forum as default basket for hesitant posters and moderating those posts moving them where corresponds is much better for everybody.

> There are other discussions regarding the newbie forum in which you participated,
> but you don't acknowledge those in your post.

Mmm ok, I still don't see what is your issue exactly. But yes, because I care about newbies and because the new maemo.org with ITt inside needs to be a nice place for newbies I have been trying to help going ahead with changes. For what I recall:

- Tablet Scene should be put out of it's Missery was started by 'ITt guys' and after dozens of posts it ended up with no conclusion. Yet the problem was/is still there, and growing. So I'm trying to push a resolution asking to Krisse/Reggie whether they want to hold it back and maintain it or we can drop it.

- I also asked Krisse whether she had any interest moving the discontinued Tablet School to school.maemo.org, by the way.

Where else? In Forum reorg pointing to talk.maemo.org I wasn't the first one suggesting the deprecation of the Newbie forum (nor was any 'maemo guy') and actually I thought it was good to keep it initially. After almost a month moving threads from Newbie to elsewhere I'm certain most of those threads are no different from any others started in other forums, and actually many of them are not started by newbies at all.

> It's reminiscent of the poll where the no change option was forgotten

I don't have anything to do with that. Actually I haven't voted because I don't find the current status so bad. But this is not relevant at all: if someone is willing to push that discussion with the aim of making this a better forum, fair enough and thank you for your time.

> It's become apparent that there is recent attention to changing the forum right
> before it moves to maemo.org.

Reggie would go ahead alone with more disruptive changes in the past, as founder and administrator of ITt. Now he is busy and his responsibilities were taken by nobody. In the meantime the talk.maemo.org plan was proposed and accepted. ITt would be today talk.maemo.org already if it wouldn't be because the maemo.org redesign is taking longer than expected.

Yes, I have been active in all these processes. In a quite transparent way. My goal is probably your goal as well: to have a place where the Maemo community can discuss, help each other and have fun. Being a good entry point for newcomers is an essential factor of success.

If the plans go ahead, Fremantle and Harmattan will increase exponentially the amount of newcomers coming to this forum. This is a key reason why I'm interested in paying a better attention to newbies, as part of my job (like now, in office hours) and also as a proud volunteer in this community (like most of my posts here, sent from home and late night).

> "pre-purchase/pre-device" forum

Normally a potential buyer goes after a specific device, and we have one forum for each device. This is why I think it's better to have those posts in the devices forums. Also, a pre-purchase question & its answers is very likely good information for many owners of such device. The same happens if the question is about software.

> I read the original sticky and like a good soldier did as I was instructed.
> Unfortunately a change was made while I was doing my thing. Now there
> is no mention of the original instructions and I feel like I'm in an episode
> of the Twilight Zone.

You will survive, will you? With the previous policy your thread was moved and with the new policy you thread has been moved as well to the same location. A big deal?

Again, slow progress with hiccups is a known side effect of partipatory systems. Sorry for the road works and please move on.

I will wait for more feedback before asking Reggie to do anything with the newbie forum...

This maemo.org subforum could probably use a sticky, and if there are going to be more changes that would be a good place for a changelog and list of links to more change discussions?

It's not that we have dozens of discussions ongoing and spread all over the forum. Isn't enough just follow the maemo.org forum if you are interested in these discussions?