Re: Council election is RUNNING! 16th - 23th May 2012
 

Next election should be November 2012 the latest - if this time council manages to keep the time frame. If I were the next council, elections for new council were in July (the closest possible date for new elections), as I'd insist in a proper regular election to empower me in that council position. I mean... I'm not George W. Bush ;-)
/j

Re: Council election is RUNNING! 16th - 23th May 2012
 

So you would employ people based on their physical aspect, where did you say you work? :D:D

Re: Council election is RUNNING! 16th - 23th May 2012
 

A couple of days ago, I received an email stating that I am eligible to vote for the council election, Quarter 2.

Even though I have tried to read through the election thread, I gave up petty quick as I am not interested in meta discussions about Nokia and it's role in … (fill in your favourite nokia bash topic) a.t.m., but rather in practicalities. That being said, there is one meta-topic that has my attention, and that is the current state of affairs on talk.maemo.org.

I am not alone, when I say I have growing concerns about the recent posting levels and influx of users with zero Linux experience. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with being new. There's nothing wrong with a desire to learn and educate yourself.

Recently the forum has been flooded with postings of the following type:

Now, as soon as you react with a “do search”, or “question was answered a thousand times before”, people will get very upset about “the tone of voice” and that the're only trying to solve their problem.

What they don't tell you is that the're too lazy to do a basic google search and they want the knowledge they need to be spoonfed. The moment you refuse that, complaints about the “unfriendliness and hostility” show their silly heads again.

I believe this development to be disastrous for the forum. And I believe it was for that reason too, that forum rules like “use proper English” and “use search before you post” have been formulated. But apparently you're an a**hole nowadays if you try to remind people of those rules, or simply make them aware of them.

So, long story short: I read quickly through the profiles of every candidate, and the only thing related to the forums I found, was the desire to bring the meego forum back to tmo. So, I'd like to know if there are any plans to restructure the forum rules a bit, or make them more visible, easier to find, etc. In my view, this would help improve the forum and make it easier for newbees to find what they need as well as make it more fun and worthwhile for more advanced users to spend time, here on TMO.

Am I the only one who thinks this is important?

Re: Council election is RUNNING! 16th - 23th May 2012
 

Your concern is absolutely right but, on the other side, this forum is precisely one the most "developer friendly" out there. You only need to compare with any Ubuntu or Android forums, both very popular products and because of that, used by a lot of different people.

To be honest, I don't see an easy way to stop it, just patience my friend.

Re: Council election is RUNNING! 16th - 23th May 2012
 

Ivgalvez, thanks for the reply. I don't think we really disagree, but I think I did not make myself very clear in my previous posting, reading back. (If only because typing forum reactions on my n900 brings in the typo's. En masse.)

I believe this forum used to be very much developers oriented. But next to that, it also used to have an approach that appealed to power users: with high level information available for those willing to learn: Id est, do research, formulate questions in a sound manner (device/problem description/analysis, the approach taken to tackle the problem, current state of affairs), in short, puzzle your way out of problems with the device. All that with the insurance there is always someone on the forum with more know-how and the willingness to share that knowledge. In short, a forum for people who want to learn or share knowledge.

Nowadays, my puzzling limits itself often to just trying to understand what a poster is saying in the first place. By the time I have figured out what it is, more often so than not, it turns out to be another case of laziness. And often I find replyers to the thread to be attacked by OP or other people who bump in to the thread. I believe that is not very encouraging for those in-the-know, to keep sharing what they can. On the contrary, it encourages them to stop helping. As a result threads are being bumped by OP's because nobody even cares to look at the questions any more, and you can simply wait until someone who is slightly or much-less-in-the-know will post the advice to simply "rm -f /".

Have a look at the Ubuntu forums, where they have made a clear distinction between beginners questions and the rest. I don't feel we need to become a Gentoo-like forum, where a beginner gets an RTFM to it's head, if it doesn't know how to emerge -world. But somewhere, there must be a compromise that works, that enables beginners to learn, and advanced users to stay interested. After all, the problems advanced users help solve, often are problems they do not have themselves. There must be an incentive for them to keep helping.

Also, please understand that I am not calling for some kind of grammar-nazism to be installed on the board. But a certain level of grammar control should not be too much to ask for. After all, we're trying to communicate. It's a waste of energy to need 6 postings in a thread just to get the content of the OP clear.

I'm afraid that implies a vision of future improvement, otherwise it would just be a call for tolerance of ignorance.

I would suggest a beginners forum with some clearly marked stickies, where basics are explained. With basics I mean, a collection of links to relevant wiki pages, faq's and the like, a primer on posting, do's and don't's; basic protocol stuff.

Re: Council election is RUNNING! 16th - 23th May 2012
 

Good idea. I would bring back the newbie subforum (actually, replace brainstorm with it).

Re: Council election is RUNNING! 16th - 23th May 2012
 

No, I employ people based on both their professional as well as their soft skills. Not providing a photo in a CV (or an application for an election, in this case) shows an amazing ignorance and lack of soft skills.
This isn't exactly a competition who can get away with the most negligently and sloppy application, and it's a shame for the candidates to expose such attitude.

Council isn't elected for their great visions, to govern the community. Community hopes for a council with good soft skills to listen what's the mood, direction, and concern in *all* the community, and then council is supposed to represent that to the wider public (here: particularly Nokia) as our ambassadors. Do you really think it's asking for too much when we appreciate to see a photo of our representatives? Do you expect to visit Nokia and hold up a sign "I'm ivgalvez" at the airport? Same on any arbitrary maemo-related meeting.
And yes, for a representative I'm even taking into account physical appearance, to a certain degree. As some aspects would clearly rule out that individual for a role that's supposed to represent me.

/j

Re: Council election is RUNNING! 16th - 23th May 2012
 

I like the beginners forum idea, but then again, newer folks might start posting there and those posts might not be categorized as how it should. There is this thread: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=32513

There was never a "newbie" subforum. The Brainstorm forum is for discussing proposals made here: http://maemo.org/community/brainstorm/

Are you proposing to get rid of the Brainstorm (http://maemo.org/community/brainstorm/) page altogether?

Re: Council election is RUNNING! 16th - 23th May 2012
 

An easy to implement, though possibly ineffective, answer would be to create a "sticky" and "locked" thread labeled "New to talk.maemo.org? READ THIS FIRST!" I'd put it in the community section unless someone had a better place for it.

Also I'm wondering if the email one receives upon opening a tmo account could include the rules one is expected to follow on tmo. Still it is possible someone will just ignore the information regardless of how you present it.

Do we have moderation for first time posters? If so we could have the moderators reply to the OP that proper grammer is a requirement to be removed from moderation.

Re: Council election is RUNNING! 16th - 23th May 2012
 

As I have mentioned one post above, there is a sticky thread here: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=32513

We don't moderate first time posters. There are plug-ins in place however to block known spammer IPs and email addresses, which pretty much do its job. Another plug-in puts first timer posts to the moderation queue if the post contains more than 3 links.

First timers don't get PM rights until they hit I think 10 posts (there were instances at the past where an automated system was used to spam members via PM).