Perhaps my reservations were unfounded or at least premature, looking at what has been put here. I absolutely do agree that an ideal solution would be one place with everyone present. I do still think however that hitting that sweet spot will be a massive challenge, and so maintain that it should be very carefully considered. I wasn't really sure that it was possible, but if Millhouse is to be believed (the Ubuntu community I'm not familiar with, but it looks something like what we want!) I guess I was being overly negative, so I'll take your word on it

I am however still far from convinced that tmo should turn into meego; for reasons stated previously I consider meego a whole new ball game and really believe that maemo ought to stay here and meego over there, even if there is some overlap. As suggested, if the N900 becomes a valid target for meego it should certainly have a presence on a meego forum. People who keep maemo on their device have tmo and people who advance with meego (primarily, I suspect, power users and hackers for the first year or so at least) have the meego community. This is my two cents and again, I'm fully ready to be proven wrong! I suspect what it comes down to is a semantic misunderstanding whereby I am thinking of meego as a new thing while others consider it (probably correctly?) as the next maemo thing.

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A little reply to Volt- I didn't phrase my post very eloquently and gave the wrong impression. Usability is the focus of my university studies this year and is my primary area of interest. I will advocate as much as anyone that UCD is not a frivolous luxury but an absolute necessity today. But IMO consulting thousands of users en masse when all those users only represent one section of the target demographic is of limited practical benefit (potentially counterproductive); I would expect things to be done differently... and so my ideas were not incompatible with a decent user consultation process. I really couldn't agree more with your view that users need to be part of (or preferably, central to) the develoment of the project.

In my opinion. if possible. this shouls be the bes solution.

The way I see it, from the forums point of view, I think TMO will evolve to a device specific site where end-users will keep talking, asking, and helping about their (current) device. I foresee moblin.org having the same set of forums as well for their own devices.

MeeGo's forum (if we create it) on the other hand will be mainly focused on the development ecosystem (Quim has done a great job identifying moblin.org's target users). It won't just be a haven for developers to talk amongst themselves (the mailing list is quite helpful with that) but what it entails is having the designers and end users there as well to provide feedback and with the goal of making the apps better. We have seen so much great advancements when the end-users start interacting with the developers here at TMO -- I actually would like to see a new thread automatically created (and not do a manual [Announce] anymore) for every new app release so everyone can talk about that app.

With regards to the triangle relationship between MeeGo, maemo.org, and moblin.org, I see anyone belonging to any of the camps to redirect the discussion to the more official forum, whenever a device or app specific question is brought up. I am quite optimistic that the 3-forum structure will hold-up and will work quite well (if ever we go this route).

EDIT: there might be more forums since it seems like MeeGo will run on Symbian devices as well.

I can't help but feel that multiple forums will be detrimental to the formation of a cohesive MeeGo community. It's an unnecessary and largely artificial separation of hardware from software, product from development.

What will happen to someone who posts a question in the "wrong" forum - will they be told to b*gger off and post in the correct place (wherever that might be)? For example, someone asking a Nokia related question on the MeeGo forum - will they be told "Sorry, please post in your own forum - thread closed"? Or a Nokia owner with an obvious OS/software related technical issue, will their thread be ignored when posting in the Nokia forum, because the Nokia forum isn't for technical issues? What a mess that will be.

These are just my opinions of course, as it's not clear what the benefit is of having multiple forums, spread out over the internet, all separate from each other but all discussing the same thing (albeit at different levels of "sophistication").

One last example: Android Forums (some of you may have heard of this operating system).

Do we really think doing it different is doing it better?

So how do you propose this to happen -- whenever a new device (company/brand/model) comes out, a new forum gets created at MeeGo.com? That would mean creating a forum for each new Nokia Harmattan device, Symbian device, Intel device, Clarion, LG, Acer, Dell, etc.? If those forums are not created, there will be discussions regarding those devices anyway. Isn't it better to just go to TMO or to moblin.org to just discuss about a specific device?

Artificial forums (e.g. Nokia Devices, Intel Devices, etc) can be created that when clicked, go to the specific company forums, TMO or forums.nokia in Nokia's case.

Sure, these problems will come up, often in fact. Dupes happen here at TMO all the time, and at MeeGo.com, it will happen most probably in a forum called 'General.' While your example shows the wrong way of saying it, I believe that a lot will reply nicely that they have seen a discussion (link added) about a certain topic at the TMO or at moblin.org.

I've seen this happen a lot of times as well in the mailing list, bugzilla, mwkn, blogs, news sites. They all mention the same topic and a link is provided to where the official forum thread is. They might still keep talking about it on the mailing list, blog, or news site, but for some reason, they will all gravitate to the 'official' thread and discuss it there.

Come to think of it, if someone points me to a specific forum or thread about something I am asking about, I would definitely appreciate it and go to that forum or thread to discuss it or maybe ask the same question again. I don't think it's a big deal, and I think it makes sense.

I'm not against having just one forum since I think it can be forced to work. I think it's just more organized to have some forums maintained where the correct organization or company has more control over.

+1 (or more, if I'm permitted)

Look at the N900 forum here as an example. Consumers buy a box with "N900" printed on it. They then find a problem, discover a question, or think of an innovative idea, so they visit talk.maemo.org and post in the N900 forum. That's what was printed on the box, after all. Nine times out of ten though, they really want Maemo 5 or some other forum.

That's no problem here. I just bump the thread over to the correct place and leave a temporary redirect behind. The move is nearly invisible to the poster and other users of the site.

Once forums are split out to different servers and domains though, such transparent moves become impossible. "Thread closed. Go elsewhere," is a nasty bucket of cold water to dump on a potential contributor. Heck, RESOLVED MOVED to Brainstorm continues to cause hard feelings, and that's not even pushing issues and their reporters off to another community, just another service within one community.

Asking new community members to distinguish between hardware and first-party software has been difficult enough here on Talk. I can't see too many new users or developers immediately being able to trace that twisty line of separation between MeeGo software and the vendor-specific bits that run atop and along side it.

Sure, fan sites dedicated to specific categories of MeeGo devices will spring up. maemo.org doesn't cover every Maemo need, and I don't expect MeeGo.com to either. MeeGo.com's sub-forum for, say, the Nokia N900+2 might not be the biggest or most popular, but offering it, rather than a shove out the door, is the important part. Palm OS-focused sites managed to offer sub-forums for the products of diverse manufacturers, and I think MeeGo.com can too.

I think Reggie is making perfect sense on this (not meant to insult anyone) and given his experience and expertise I'm willing to support his proposals.

how many new users coming to MeeGo.com for first time do you think will have heard of or known to go to a old platform forum called maemo to ask MeeGo device questions?
i think none and your going to create more work and duplications of answers in the long run

I'm not proposing that it go down to the device level - at least not yet. I've already posted links to other forums that cope with similar problems to the one we are facing here. A middle path would be to create vendor forums, or simply device category forums, or even a combination of the two and only when necessary (due to the volume of discussion) consider creating device specific forums if/when particular devices become popular.

Basically, I'd just suggest playing it by ear for now but at the very least create a single forum where everyone can partake at all levels and employ whatever organization makes sense today. And there's always the mailing lists for the hardcore techies that think web forums make life too easy.

Great, but unless they're all using OpenID it's not likely I'll be able to post in that other forum and thus help someone unless I want to sign up to yet-another-forum. It's an option, but not one I would like to see happen, particularly as it means searching for information would be next to impossible which is another benefit of a single/centralised forum.

However if a vendor does want to strike out on their own and have their own MeeGo device forum with their own little community that's entirely up to them, but it's not something I want to be a part of.

Of course my example may be considered extreme, and I'm sure at first that people will be very kind and assist those newbies that are posting in the "wrong" forum, but eventually people will become more agressive/assertive out of frustration because it may become a regular issue, or posts will simply be ignored leaving the original poster to wonder what kind of community this is. Pretty soon we'll have stickies all over the show dictating posting etiquette.

And none of this is actually necessary, but may come to pass in an effort to cut down on anticipated "noise" that could result from a single, large and vibrant community. That's really the only reason I can see for this debate - a fear of noise.

I can certainly see that multiple forums would be more organised and focused, but I can also see that it will result in a tremendous amount of overlap and fragmentation - technical people will congregate towards meego.com (hub) leaving the newbies and not-so-technical end users to discuss amongst themselves on device specific forums (rim)... what a waste, and I'm not sure it's really sustainable.

Let's say a husband and wife have MeeGo devices, one a Nokia and the other LG - as I'm sexist, the husband has the support role in the household so he's now posting away on two forums depending on which device has the problem. He got the Nokia first so he knows his way around the Nokia MeeGo forum, but the LG forum is new and very immature and doesn't have such good help - should he discuss a problem he has with his LG phone on the Nokia forum instead? After all, the devices are going to be very similar, a Nokia person might be able to offer some assistance - or the problem may already have been answered which he could find by searching the Nokia site.

Anyway I think I'm digressing... but if that's the way it goes - fine, we're only our 4th (or is it 5th?) OS rewrite in 5 years, and now we're discussing the 3rd forum reboot in the same time-frame. ;-)

I think it's a given that there are pros and cons to either polar approach. Ultimately going forward though I think the arguments for breaking with the maemo.org forum and starting from a clean slate for MeeGo make the most sense.