Well as Mer grows its going to need seporate forums for like Applications and stuff since it runs more stuff that wont run on OS2008, also Mer works with more front ends then just Hildon so maybe a Mer Section like this

Mer General
-Devices
-Applcations
-Frontends

might even want some subforums under devices.

We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, but for now, the amount of Mer traffic barely justifies a single forum.

There will always be a bit of a tension between those of us who like to keep our socks in one drawer, underpants in another, and undershirts in a third drawer, and those of us who like to keep all of the above in one big drawer.

I think that if the "Alternatives" section is going to be collapsed to a single category, you should consider collapsing the N800, N810 and Wimax into a single N8x0 forum; it should be clear from the thread title what device is being discussed.

In fact, why not a single forum, called "Hardware"? I think if someone has a 770 question, they'll make that clear. Or if someone has a question about the ill-fated, short-lived WiMax edition, they'll put that in the thread title. If someone asks about the built-in keyboard or GPS, it will be fairly obvious that they're not talking about the N800.

I suspect you were qoling, but I like this idea.

Actually no, I was serious. We need to decide across the board; do we have big drawers or not?

Pun intended.

Why not both. You can watch all topics by going to the 'Alternatives' forum and see the specific forums by browsing into them if you prefer. Much like tagging.

Me too. In fact I use just one category: "New Posts"

If there is no agrement on the Alternatives sub-forums we can just keep the status quo. But let me try to convince you at least up to a reasonable level.

About merging devices, I think it's a good joke. Installing different alternatives is relatively easy, so a user might be potentially interested in many. Changing devices is more complicated if you don't have deep pockets.

Right now:

- Nokia N800 (27 Viewing)
3,036 threads (120 updated this year) & 27,623 posts

- Alternatives (13 Viewing) in total
368 threads (15 updated this year) & 8107 posts

Android 28 threads (10 updated this year) & 1.183 posts
Debian 70 (16) & 2976
KDE 135 (7) & 2015
Palm OS 110 (11) & 1295

And btw searching for "Mer" in titles gives 10 results. Not very scientific but should give an idea. So perhaps it's not worth to start with a Mer subforum either.

And promote subforums only when it's clear that a topic has enough traffic to deserve it. This is how forums use to grow organically.

Honestly, N800 and N810 might reasonably be merged, because a lot of questions that get asked in one really apply to both. On the other hand, none of this really matters, because people either search the whole site, or don't search at all.

Most threads in the N800 forum that apply also to the N810 and viceversa should probably belong to none, being the main candidates OS2008 or Apps.

Talk.maemo.org not only needs a reorganization and deprecation of forums, it also needs a better (more distributed) moderation. The cleaner and better sorted the forums are, the most likely new posters will post in the right forum.

And sorry but I don't think the majority of users go through all the New Posts. Some of us do, and you know it takes time and regular commitment. Most users look probably the top 10 in the home and perhaps their preferred couple of forums.