Hi,

I think you are getting to the heart of the matter.

Some people on the forums think of the forums as "our maemo.org" and everything else as "their maemo.org" - I would fundamentally contest that.

There is no you & us, we are all part of the same community. Some of us prefer forums, some of us prefer mailing lists. Some of us prefer using bugzilla or IRC or coding or whatever. Many of us need to find information about the project, and some of us want to spend some time to make that information better.

And here's where we disagree. I don't understand why someone would be prepared to contribute to a forum wiki and not another wiki dedicated to the same goal. It makes no sense to have two wikis because a wiki is a community maintained resource, and maintaining two of them splits our community of people who want to improve Maemo documentation.

What makes sense is having the minimum easily-maintainable infrastructure possible, and ensuring that processes are in place to ensure community continuity. That means one wiki, and some maintenance of the resource to prevent excessive bitrot.

Cheers,
Dave.

Now Dave... I never said there was a you or us now did I?

Just as in the past I am being pragmatic here and not argumentative.

Go where the users are. Of course it is easier to maintain something if no one uses it. Right now on the main page of the forum there is is yet another thread created by a helpful new member with a collection of command lines.

He obviously felt there was a need to post this information here and he obviously wanted to help other members. An older member rightfully suggested that a WiKi page should be created instead and gave some instructions... I don't know for sure but I seemed to feel the OP's eyes kind of glass over.

I also suspect that when the OP first sees that he must log in again he will have questions that he would want answered before he proceeds. I'm thinkin' he will come back to this forum to ask them. When he does finally proceed he will have even more questions. Once inside the Midgard environment how does he find assistance...



If he chooses the search tool on the WiKi page he may find that he needs a garage account.

That back and forth may suck any helpful energy he may have had out of him entirely.

These things have always been, and it's doubtful they will change. Resources are dwindling. Members who have gone through all these sign in procedures are also dwindling. Yet, whenever the N900 is introduced to a new market or has a price drop in an existing market, forum membership increases.

I am surprised that someone didn't pipe in after I posted that exorcise in this thread with: If you want to find the WiKi all I have to do is hit the "development" link in the top bar...
Perhaps that would have highlighted at least one issue that may create this us/them schism you perceive.

The heart of the matter is that the thousands who joined maemo.org through this forum may not consider themselves developers. They may be content in considering themselves users who "engage" in discussions with some developers and hence the term coined by qole I believe, "engaged users".

These 'engaged users" have a considerable value to the developers in this organization. To collaborate this statement perhaps you might ask some of our members on the karma list ranked by product. I have always maintained that this value is the legacy that maemo.org has produced.

Let's face it. It ain't gonna be some elegant piece of open source Maemo code.

When those developers move on ... and they will. I believe they will miss the access to "engaged users" that maemo.org provided.

Why not enhance the value we do offer instead of stifling it by trying to make it fit into something else?

qgil was the originator and champion of that term, and the people it represents, actually.

As for the rest, well, the maemo.org handover talks have already identified single sign on as the absolute-top-priority-why-hasn't-it-been-completed-already-this-is-ridiculous item. I'm encouraged by the way Jaffa begins frothing at the mouth a bit when he demands status updates regarding it.

Dave, I appreciate your taking the time to talk through this stuff. You gave two choices about how to deal with old wiki information: update it or delete it. But there is of course a third option: deprecate it. Specifically, clearly label it on the top as being old & in need of updating & possibly not relevant to the N900.

I'm concerned that the Brainstorm page you linked to recommends that old information be deleted or at least hidden better. This wording seems to suggest that deleting is the first choice which contradicts wording higher up stating that the applicable OS &/or device should be clearly identified. Can this please be fixed?

Thanks to qgil then, we can always use champions and qole was one as well.

As for the rest, well Jaffa and our other champions may soon be running out of steam or perhaps directing their energies somewhere else.

In the end though, we will still have a community of engaged Maemo device users who will continue to be learning how, and developing uses for their own devices. We will still share techniques and trade flames sometimes on this or another forum.

Once we hit EOL, Bugzilla would be redundant and the auto builder may not be needed either. The information they provided in the past would be though, and that can be archived.

I'm just looking forward as any engaged user who plans to continue using his Maemo device would. The economies of this smaller scale may indicate that maemo.org can survive in one environment or the other and not both as it does now.

I have hope in QT as I see the possibility for "killer", "must have", "can't live without", "game changer" apps designed for release with newer Symbian or MeeGo handsets being back-ported to us folk in the cheap seats. I'm also thinkin' some of us folks in these cheap seats will learn and share how its to be done. That process, and others like it in an engaged users future will more likely than not, take place in a forum environment.

I am now going to say something that could be construed as an us/them statement but that is not my intent. My intent is to illustrate my motivation for my previously posted comments.

I recently read another's remarks that Maemo developers feel that Nokia pulled the rug out from under them.

In the future, I don't want engaged users of Maemo devices to feel that maemo.org pulled the rug out from under them.

I hope we are bigger than that.

EDIT: Any comments I post about EOL and maemo.org services are purely speculative.