"Community" improvements - or is it only me?
 

The title is vague because I don't find the correct term to describe what I want to say... It's just that I personally feel that during the last 6 months or so, the overall feeling of everything around my N800 keeps improving significantly, adding a lot to my user experience.

• Bugs in bugzilla seem to get real treatment now.
• Applications move to the "Extras"-repository.
• The Wiki is suddenly useful.
• Activities in the community are documented and announced in a transparent way.
• ...

None of this has any direct effect on my N800, but still... All this humming and buzzing (and the effects it has, like up-to-date Wiki pages, more apps readily available from the application manager, closed bugs...) add a lot to the joy of owning the device. At least for me.

I cannot remember having seen this amount of activity in the past.

Am I alone with this impression or do I simply see the effect of somebody really coordinating and pushing the community? Or didn't I pay attention when the same humming and buzzing happened before?

Re: "Community" improvements - or is it only me?
 

You're not alone :)

Re: "Community" improvements - or is it only me?
 

Not just you.

Re: "Community" improvements - or is it only me?
 

Nope, its not just you.

People are defining what they want and trying to make it happen.
Nokia are opening up and listening to people.

I feel connected.

Re: "Community" improvements - or is it only me?
 

I have seen some improvements and some unimprovements. It seems to me that overall, the environment is still not particularly newbie friendly.

I personally have become less interested in the tablet environment, though things like liqbase are definitely fantastic -- but is that the result of improvements here, or just a great programmer from nowhere arriving?

I am also spending less time trying to read threads that have become longer than ever. People have really been converted by the ceaseless pressure not to start new threads, so if you have a question, you need to put it at the bottom of a bottomless pit of messages.

I appreciate the actions of the heroes here, but for me the tablet thrill is gone.

Re: "Community" improvements - or is it only me?
 

liqbase wouldn't exist without the great people in this community helping in numerous ways.

I am still a n00b in Linux and still don't understand many parts of it. I simply have ideas that I am trying to visualize, the folks around here in all of their respective fields know the specifics.

Re: "Community" improvements - or is it only me?
 

Thanks for the warm words. I do my best. :)

Re: "Community" improvements - or is it only me?
 

Agree 100% with your comments.
In particular, Nokia tablet project has not evolved as fast as I hoped (especially when you compare it with the competition).
Longer threads tend to hide the answer to the title post and just increase the frustration when looking for a solutions to a problem in google searches. I too would appreciate small threads relevant to the post title.

Re: "Community" improvements - or is it only me?
 

A lot of this has to do with the shift in maemo.org's direction Nokia has been pushing over the last 8 months with the help of the maemo.org Four (Niels, webmaster; Dave, docmaster; and Andre and Karsten, bugmasters) and Quim.

I also think we're getting some tangible benefits from the Council's work as well, though, admittedly, I'm overwhelmingly biased. ;)

Sadly this one isn't quite as good as it sounds, because it's mostly just Andre sprinting back and forth between the internal tracker and the external one doing an insane amount of what amounts to "administrative overhead"-work keeping them in sync. Which is not, unfortunately, actual Nokia engineers and product managers actually getting involved in Bugzilla.

That is, of course, not to say that we don't benefit greatly from the crazy amount of work Andre puts in (Thanks, Andre!), but I can't help feeling that it's a bandaid on the bug #630 situation that may delay real progress (certainly through no fault of Andre's, since he's one of the major pushers internally for Nokia's involvement in Bugzilla).

Goes to show that most people really want to do the right thing. This has everything to do with Ed, Mikhail and Niels' work on Extras and the autobuilder, and, in particular, Niels' incredible effort to harass as many repository owners as possible to put their packages into Extras.

More tangible benefits are likely to come from both the package categories discussion and work on improving the Application Manager. The perks and incentives for packagers to use Extras are likely to be increasing in the near future.

Dave kicked this one off with the migration from the (godawful) Midgard wiki to the Mediawiki we're using now, I continued it by improving the recovered articles, adding new ones (andrewfblack copied most of the useful stuff over from the itT wiki. Thanks!), and am finishing it up now by finally killing the Midgard wiki so everybody can move on (particularly Google <_<).

Good tools are everything. ;)

The public Sprint meetings really help out a lot here, as well as the overall shift in the community's thinking towards openness and transparency. Hopefully Maemo Software is learning from maemo.org's example and beginning to follow suit.

Re: "Community" improvements - or is it only me?
 

It would also be useful for people to summarise important threads on the maemo.org wiki, where they can be searched/looked at/fine tuning corrections made more easily than buried under millions of posts.

Re: "Community" improvements - or is it only me?
 

These things are improving, possibly, but need to be taken into context of the alternative.
When I got my N810 a year ago I wanted a shirt pocket computer that with tweaking I could make function as a PDA.
With AbiWord, Gnumeric, Claws-Mail and a suite of smaller tools (OTG!!!) it's great. These all came from the community. Unix scripts to to a number of functions came from seamless ports.
However I researched the N810 vs alternatives and KNEW what I was getting into. I figured I would not have a seamless PIM with a great GPS, two way video Skype with a PC, able to control my PS3. These are still hopes.
So - things have improved. If I used to wake up and bash my head with a 4X4 to get things started, I would now be bashing my head with a 2x2.
Of course if I had a similarly sized Windoze machine maybe I would not be bashing my head.

The "joy of owning the device" is there but still could be improved.

Also - "so if you have a question, you need to put it at the bottom of a bottomless pit of messages. " I find this VERY useful if the peeps could do it. That way when I click on a thread and view last post I can be up to date with hopefully less repetition.

Re: "Community" improvements - or is it only me?
 

Had to reinstall today. I saw various updates on the OS2008 user site. Nokia even advertises for Xohm on the Tableteer applet. Which was how I found out about the OS2008 user site being updated in the first place.

Re: "Community" improvements - or is it only me?
 

I agree about the endless-thread problem here.

I would love to see thread starters build and maintain FAQs, and I guess I should say that the FAQs should be posted to the maemo.org wiki so that GA doesn't growl at me.

I'm thinking of posting a blog entry with some choice ITt bits that I've found. This will show up in Planet Maemo and point people to the stuff here that I find coolest. I'm trying to figure out a way to deal with people posting links to nifty stuff here and on #maemo, which often get lost in the posts.

Re: "Community" improvements - or is it only me?
 

Thanks for the good feedback, noted also the rest.

Hopefully the community activity will just increase, both in volume and complexity. We think Fremantle & Harmattan will bring new generations of potential community contributors to maemo.org and Nokia itself is putting more flesh (and more critical to the platform development) also on the community side.

This is why now it's a good time to define the collaboration infrastructure of your dreams. Then we'll see whether we all are able to put it in place and make it work. Garage, wiki and mailing lists are a good starting point but not enough.

ITt itself fills a crucial gap and hopefully it will be more and better integrated to maemo.org