There's some Nokians that most of us know by name. They either write here at t.m.o. or we see their blogs syndicated at Planet Maemo.

This is a nice thing, btw.

But I realized I only have a very vague knowledge of who those people are... no, that's nonsense, let's say: I couldn't put them in the right places if someone showed me a diagram of the Nokia organization around Maemo. You know, who has to ask whom before he goes on holidays. Is it all in one hierarchical structure or are some of the people we know on one level within the organization, leading different teams?

There's this page
http://wiki.maemo.org/People
that such information could be added to. Or not. I don't know.

Of course what I'm asking here is "give me information about Nokias internal structure, about the organization, about each person's level of responsibility". I'm not sure if they're prepared to do this and would accept a "we'd like to but can't".

Oh, and while we're at it, I've always wanted to know how "important" Maemo people are within Nokia. If I start at the CEO, where would the Maemo Devices team show up in the organigram?

This has been discussed several times in the past. The conclusion the last time was that enough people would prefer not to advertise their affiliation or their particular position in Nokia that it wouldn't be worthwhile.* Besides which, it'd be nearly impossible to maintain.

Instead, we've got an opt-in system where each person can choose to indicate their affiliation and possibly their position in their profiles on maemo.org.

*For very understandable reasons, as you can see from the responses generated here against Nokians and many people's complete inability to understand the whole "hat" concept (affects Quim a lot).

I say we should know who they are so we can ask them all kinds of stupid questions daily, until they have to change their e-mail!

We do that anyway, don't we? That wouldn't change anything. Any Nokia-employee who says he is one (either here or on his blog or by appearing in a video) knows that such questions will come... And the Nokians I think of in this context learned to filter them.

I don't see how giving us a notion of the organisation and hierarchy inside the Maemo team at Nokia would change the noise directed at those people. The only problem I see is that my company, for example, wouldn't dream of making such structures public.

Anyway, it's just curiosity. Basically the idea comes from the fact that whenever I quote a Nokia employee on my blog, I run into the problem of telling my readers who this person actually is in terms of importance and responsibility. English terms and abbreviations don't mean much and are a nuisance in a German text; so I'd like to be able to refer to "Mrs. Smith, who is responsible for..." and "Mr. Miller, who reports directly to OPK at Nokia and leads the whole..." and "Mrs. Jones, who is Maemo at Nokia".

We owe them that much to protect their privacy, imagine how it would be any new user asking them when the new firmware is coming out:P

And then, these people do not owe us anything by browsing this forum and helping us - for some it's just a job that ends @ xx:xx pm - for others it's passion that they do in their spare time aswell, I highly appreciate that

I don't understand you.

If you already know a person's full name (because he or she publishes it here or on his/her blog) and if you know that this person works at Nokia for Maemo (because he or she publishes it here or on his/her blog), how would you invade their privacy if they'd also tell us what exactly they do at Nokia and (especially) how their respective positions inside Nokia relate to each other? (EDIT: and to the higher Nokia management levels)

Well we might know, but not everybody that is new here does. I simply meant it in the way of not pointing fingers here on the forum since newbies are often tempted to ask a "wide range of questions" directly via pm/mail.

Just imagine getting tons of emails like this:

Obviously my English isn't adequate to participate in this forum.

I'm want a chocolate cake and you tell me you don't have snow tires in stock.

OTOH, it doesn't matter really, nobody else than Nokia could decide upon this or do it, so it's no use discussing it. Only wanted to ask them.

Sorry for the useless ranting, it's none of my business anyway
Cheers