I have been a member of XDA some time now. In the time that I have been a member I have used various forums from the Wizard thru the Raphael. I am seeing a transformation in the forum that I think we need to correct. When I first joined, the board was very different from the way it is today. The posts were more technical in nature, with people offering suggestions and posting not only the bugs they found with the ROM’s, but sometimes the fix as well. I feel that the Raphael forum has strayed far from that, to the point where people are just posting and waiting for the chefs to fix everything. I am not saying everyone does that, but it is the majority. There are two things I am concerned about. One, chefs are leaving from being burned out or simply not having the time to keep up with all the requests, Second, the quality of the ROMs. See, if we help the chefs by either resolving our own issues or helping them with bug resolution they will have more time for improvements and refinement. This will lead to the fastest most stable ROMs possible. I think the community needs to go back to the times when people were a little hesitant to just post anything, and actually do research and troubleshooting before bugging the chefs. Any and all comments would be appreciated, either agreeing or disagreeing with me.
-McMex
Amen to that! could not agree with you more....
the problem is that flashing ROMs are too easy now, the tools are too useful, and these VERY powerful tools are now in the hands of kids too immature to research for themselves
I agree with you McMexican. Just had an issue in the Blackstone forum over this exact issue you mention here.
P1Tater said:
Here's the issue with XDA lately and it's not just this thread that it's happening. The problem is that everyone reports a bug but noone tries to assist in fixing it. Everyone expects the cook to be all-knowing and be able to fix himself. However, these people have lives as well. They have families and jobs and don't have 24 hours in a day to just sit here on the thread and wait for people to report bugs so they have something to do. So, everyone complains, cries and whines about their issues and never once says what apps they have installed, uninstalled, what regs they have changed or files they have added or deleted and then wonder why the chef doesn't have the issue and why he can't fix it. Then when the chef gets upset. Then, when they do get upset then the "Thank You's" come. Did it ever occur to anyone to thank the chef when the rom worked? No, when it works you don't post and when it doesn't work you post complaints. I wonder why the chef's get upset . Just think about it.
What should happen is if it works, thank the chef or contribute. Damn, even a Thank You goes a long way. If you are having issues, maybe just maybe, report the issue, what you have tried, whatt apps you have installed and what you have uninstalled. Ususally when a chef cooks a rom, they don't install apps to the rom because everything they use is cooked in. Believe it or not, some apps will absolutely kill a rom.
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This is what I posted in that thread but it seems as though it is worth mentioning here as this discusses the exact same issue we seem to be having all over XDA lately.
Agree
I agree with this partly although I'm not sure this is the right place to post it.
Its a free forum and in its nature you will nearly always get this type of thing.
Yes it does burn out alot of the chef's but they also have lives that take on different directions as time moves on and so they come and go.
The bug reporting with no solution must be really pissing our chefs off and it is not just for roms.. I'm seeing it with software enhancements too.
At its core this is still by far the best forum for our devices. I believe XDA has always developed the best ROMS & enhancements for our devices and often take them to places the original manufacturers would never have dreamed of.
I just don't know how something like this can be policed. Nearly all the guys post in their first post something about not asking dumb questions but yet they still get them.
The ones that really piss me off are something like "Just flashed and now blah won't work" with absolutely no details at all.
What I do is leave the 'dumb questions' to the other users of my ROM to answer.. I find the userbase to be generally savvy enough to answer its own questions
The ones that I feel the userbase will not be able to answer easily or in a timely fashion, I post an answer for
It's not that I wouldn't like to have the time to sit there and answer all the 'dumb questions', but my time is better spent doing other things.. and the users don't seem to mind helping each other generally, when it's within their knowledge..
Then again my ROM is a little more hands-on than others, so i've already eliminated a good amount of the 'newbies' by it not being quite so easy to flash
mcmexican said:
I have been a member of XDA some time now. In the time that I have been a member I have used various forums from the Wizard thru the Raphael. I am seeing a transformation in the forum that I think we need to correct. When I first joined, the board was very different from the way it is today. The posts were more technical in nature, with people offering suggestions and posting not only the bugs they found with the ROM’s, but sometimes the fix as well. I feel that the Raphael forum has strayed far from that, to the point where people are just posting and waiting for the chefs to fix everything. I am not saying everyone does that, but it is the majority. There are two things I am concerned about. One, chefs are leaving from being burned out or simply not having the time to keep up with all the requests, Second, the quality of the ROMs. See, if we help the chefs by either resolving our own issues or helping them with bug resolution they will have more time for improvements and refinement. This will lead to the fastest most stable ROMs possible. I think the community needs to go back to the times when people were a little hesitant to just post anything, and actually do research and troubleshooting before bugging the chefs. Any and all comments would be appreciated, either agreeing or disagreeing with me.
-McMex
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P1Tater said:
I agree with you McMexican. Just had an issue in the Blackstone forum over this exact issue you mention here.
Originally Posted by P1Tater
Here's the issue with XDA lately and it's not just this thread that it's happening. The problem is that everyone reports a bug but noone tries to assist in fixing it. Everyone expects the cook to be all-knowing and be able to fix himself. However, these people have lives as well. They have families and jobs and don't have 24 hours in a day to just sit here on the thread and wait for people to report bugs so they have something to do. So, everyone complains, cries and whines about their issues and never once says what apps they have installed, uninstalled, what regs they have changed or files they have added or deleted and then wonder why the chef doesn't have the issue and why he can't fix it. Then when the chef gets upset. Then, when they do get upset then the "Thank You's" come. Did it ever occur to anyone to thank the chef when the rom worked? No, when it works you don't post and when it doesn't work you post complaints. I wonder why the chef's get upset . Just think about it.
What should happen is if it works, thank the chef or contribute. Damn, even a Thank You goes a long way. If you are having issues, maybe just maybe, report the issue, what you have tried, whatt apps you have installed and what you have uninstalled. Ususally when a chef cooks a rom, they don't install apps to the rom because everything they use is cooked in. Believe it or not, some apps will absolutely kill a rom.
This is what I posted in that thread but it seems as though it is worth mentioning here as this discusses the exact same issue we seem to be having all over XDA lately.
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I absolutely agree. Both of these posts describe the reality of the situation. Back in the wizard days for the most part only people pushing the edge of technology bought the windows mobile PDA phones. The same appled to the hermes for the most part. When I moved to the tilt the tides began to turn. Prices of this type of phone began to be more reasonable based upon the technology. More and more companies bagan pushing mail. The internet became more of a requirement than a novelty. Less and less tech savy users began to purchase. These buyers soon learned winmo had a ton of flaws and came to xda. Some spent the time to learn and have become valuable members of the forum. Many did not. They pop in and want us to be the fix all for thier issues. One prime example is GSleon3. How many tilts did he unbrick for people carelessly flashing tilts. When the Fuze arrived the problem only grew. Ive seen more new members in the last 3 months than my entire time on xda. A few of the new members have really taken the time to learn and contribute. MANY have not. I get at least 15 posts a day in my thread asking questions that are answered multiple times in the thread. I get at least 30 posts per day that could easily be answered in at least 1 thread on xda if not dozens.
Most of the chefs in this forum are pushing the limits with cutting edge builds. Da_G has more or less led the way. It amazes me how many users think everything should work perfectly. With all the easy kitchens and premade OEMs so many people think making a good stable rom is easy.
I commend Da_G on pushing the cooking aspect. Hopefully more will realize its not as easy as they think. Ive been at this for years and I learn something new every day.
Over the past month I have grown more and more discouraged. If rom users would spend that extra few minutes to find a fix I could do so much more.
I do however want to thank all of those that have searched, that have, helped,that have answered questions and have done so much to make mine and other chefs roms better
While I do agree with all of what has been stated, and myself to be considered a "NOOB", I really think it comes down to the individual user. I may have asked a question or two (or 30) that may have been answered already before, but I personally try to search and I do try to find the answers myself when I can. I do try and figure the answers myself, but I just don't have the expertise to do so quite often. But myself, I try to make up for my lack of capabilities by way of PayPal to our grear chefs. Others don't truly understand the amount of work that goes into the cooking of ROMS, I am BARELY tapping into that now. I have been visiting XDA for quite some time now and have seen it grow. Unfortunately the user base has grown very large, and it is hard to manage the forums. With there being so many places to find information in this website, it takes time just to locate the information you need. Sadly, I don't see much change unless you start locking down the members capabilities to post, which would defeat the whole purpose of a community forum. As far as it is for the ROM Chefs, a suggestion for you would to not publicly post your ROMs (except in the case of the kitchens, don't do that, I'm addicted!) right away. Maybe put a password on them upon download and have some filtering system or something and maybe only release the password selectively or something. And have a guideline for posters, like your post must contain this: and if the post doesn't have that, then don't even bother responding. Let's face it, we techies with out the tech knowledge are at the mercy of the chefs!
Site is free but maybe some type of short ban on posting for spammer and those who bug chef after three strikes or so by senior member. A chef doesnt cook for just one person he cooks to what you may like. If you dont like a chef rom try another or just go back to dead stock rom bug your carrier. But my idea might be to much work.
Idea
Radimus said:
and these VERY powerful tools are now in the hands of kids too immature to research for themselves
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Wow, really? Maybe you were a dumb kid, but I'd like to avoid this stereotype.
The users on threads need to stop asking dumb questions, though. I think a rating system should be implemented like on Engadget. That way every time someone makes a dumb post we can demote them and limit their post count per day
The reason why there is so many nOObs posting is that the Raphael has had such a tremendous success at the carrier level. Almost all of the US carriers have picked up the Touch Pro. So it is very reasonable to surmize that the majority of new users are new to windows mobile and completely blown away by the amazing amount of tweaks available for it.
Maybe the best idea is create special forums designed for Senior Members only to comment in. They would be locked to all others to comment on, but visible for all to see. Then create another set of forums for general discussion. I see absolutely no reason a development forum should be open to all anyway. I often think if I read one more "Downloading now!" post I will scream! So again, I would lock just the development and hacking forums to approved members, or at least make all posts be moderated first before they are posted. That will keep the development threads clean.
I would then load up the non development discussion forums and threads with adwords and advertising and give that money back to the real developers. LEt the nOObs pay for development indirectly through advertising.
sammypwns said:
Wow, really? Maybe you were a dumb kid, but I'd like to avoid this stereotype.
The users on threads need to stop asking dumb questions, though. I think a rating system should be implemented like on Engadget. That way every time someone makes a dumb post we can demote them and limit their post count per day
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Is this post really necessary?
Anyway,
I agree with McMex about the types of post but part of the problem is the organization of the information. Idea for you, Subdivide the forum so that the Cooked ROMs could have their own POST that was a sticky and only limited to the Chef for editing (containing information about updates and revisions etc,...). Then maybe create another post for ISSUES ONLY with the Cooked ROM. And then one more for the nonsense that burdens the Chef or other users like me who try and shift through the countless meaningless post by the "can you fix..." crew. This might help keep the organization of the VALUABLE information contained in this forum.
I use XDA to help me stay up on the latest stuff so I can impress the boss and his co-horts into believing that I am a technical wiz (ha!).
Anyway, this is a bit disorganized and polluted but if you take the time to search, read, search some more and read some more you can find a lot of great help here. But it does need some organizing. Maybe if some people would use discretion in posting it might help cut down on the smog, if you know what I mean.
DSmithZ28, I think that we are on the same idea.
Many people here started out as noobs, used what they read, and then became developers. I'm trying to do just that. It would not be helpful to limit what I can see as I would not be able to learn the development process as easily. This wave just has to be ridden out and the community will pick up some more help along the way.
Just thought of this from systematic approach and put it in numbers (guessed at the numbers):
Forum pre-influx:
60% Experienced Members
30% Moderate
9% Noobs
1% Don't know where they are
Forum post-influx
45% Experienced Members
24% Moderate
30% Noobs
1% Still celebrating Obama's election
-What this means is that there aren't enough mid level people ATM to handle all of the tedious questions that the developers shouldn't have to answer. As more noob's gain knowledge, there should be a shift in the paradigm, this will even itself out and lead to another great period for XDA!
One thought, what if there were some type of Pledge or Credo thread that would echo the sentiments of this thread. Make it so the new member cannot post until they've responded "Read and Understood" to that thread.
Whatever happens, I pledge to help people find their answers, as it helps me learn along the way.
I know this probably sounds retarded, but back in the Kasier days, there was a couple of users (Scotchua, McMexican, Mfrazzz, taiser999, crispyj, HDStreetglide, JimmyMcGee, Daveshaw, & rzanolgy just to name a few) who floated around all of the rom threads and answered questions along with giving links and subtle prodding of the search function. Maybe if there were more users who did this, things wouldn't be the way they are today. But it will take more than just a couple of users. It will take the work of everyone. Also, we need more users helping edit the wiki's. These are just a couple of suggestions.
Never a truer word spoken, guys
Definitely agree that the culture's changed around here over the past few years.
I dallied a little with cooking a year ago. I was lucky - I had several people helping me by providing solutions to the problems I had (I'm looking at you McMex there, among others!). Back on the Kaiser, every chef helped each other and there was a hardcore group of users who knew what they were talking about and offered solutions. On the Raphael, we've got an excellent group of chefs co-operating, and there are a few of the hardcore, helpful users but I think they're getting lost in the huge amount of other users who seem to think this is an HTC support forum - they've spent money on their phones and think we owe them!
Have the users changed here, or is it just we've got so many more (unconstructive) users in here that they're being too diluted to see?
My time in the kitchen taught me I was out of my depth, and eternal respect for those people who deserve to be in there!
Maybe a read/search count of couple hundred before you can post in the dev forum? Just a thought. Seems like an easiest solution to implement for now.
@ overjjrk
Lol at the 1% celebrating Obama's election
And back on topic, I vote for a Question and Answers section for every device!
Agreed "at least 100%" to post one.
I started - as everybody did - as a NOOB and somehow I learned fairly good (*cough cough*) how to deal with these devices. I do also try to pick up threads now and then surfing the forum and trying to help (enough praise) but it trips me off BIG TIME that it seems meanwhile that NOOB's barely use the search, have no idea how google is spelled and give up after the first try or EVEN WORSE bump their own threads if the don't receive a quick answer. Good that I can keep my temper but sometimes I'd really like to answer "@@#$%%^&"....
I do like what pages like "blownfuze" or "fuzemobilty" provide for NOOBs because with that information stickies would take at least the first three pages of a subject.
Not sure if it can/will work out but fine tuning the Wiki (without breaking it) may help a bit since we all live from the contributions of each other.
An approach could be a Readme 1st section where either only mods or users willing to take this task, can contribute (guess mods will be overwhelmed since they too have a daytime job) and no replies are allowed.
One of the biggest issues and posts I do see recently is "setup the device to a certain provider". I'm not a cab or software guy but could one of these great people here perhaps come up with an idea to have a CAB which will simply set up the connection setting the that particular provider? There aren't more than 2 dozen major ones world wide so that could bring freedom to the chefs to deal with provider specific settings and keep concentrated on fine tuning a ROM still being open for the whole world.... just one of the ideas.
Let's see how this thread evolves.
how about i just start banning people that don't live in new york?
i think this is a good way to go about things.
Sorry I missed the town hall meeting. I am a noob to Roms and phone moding, I did do a lot with the original xbox back when it was fun to mod. Ok a little off toppic.
One thing that noticed you never looked at is where are your noobs (me) comming in to your site? I have only been looking at roms for about a week. All of the searches that I did about roms and rooting my phone all led me to the "The Bible" and yes where is that located at. Most people will post there they find the information. You might look at moving that post to the general tab as this is going to be one of the first places that a person is going to look to first.
This will also be a place that a noob is going to post so dumb question for the 1,000,000th time. If you expect it, it will not be a bad thing.
And yes I did to a bad flash and spent about 5 hours looking for a way to fix what I did.
Thanks for your time and have a great day/night
Good point. I myself was thinking when I first started to look into flashing ROMs and such and found the bible in the Dev section. The Vibrant Bible has lots of information and should probably be in the General Section as it does draw people to the Dev section instead of General.
Maybe it should be in the Q&A forum as it has lots of both.
One of the biggest problems with this forum seems to be that for a development forum, there is very little actual development going on. Obviously only a select group of people have the knowledge and desire to truly develop custom ROMs, but there's a role others can take too.
I've been involved in other development communities, outside of Android, and I can't recall a community as poisonous as this one. The amount of high level technical discussion is nill. As inexperienced as I am with Android, I can't remember the last post that sent me running to google to read more about something. There seems to be little to no give-and-take between developers, which is typically the most fun of any development group I've been a part of. The goal of working towards any common framework seems non-existant.
The supporters of certain ROMs resemble cults more than critical, helpful users. I can't count the amount of replies I've seen to legitimate questions or criticisms saying nothing more than, "Developer X puts in all this time, so you should just be thankful", or some iteration of that. While possibly true, that's the type of worthless hero worship that provides nothing in a community like this.
Even the individual developer forums are worthless. They're 75% "you're awesome" posts, with the other 25% being bug reports.
Obviously the popularity of XDA has made it a destination for simple support posts in addition to development discussion. I guess that's frustrating, but can be handled through moderation. I know on other forums, if I had nothing to do, I'd sit in the help section and answer posts for a couple hours. I'm sure we've all posted on other forums and received helped we're thankful for. Certainly the level of douchebagery that half the users here show isn't needed.
I don't know. Maybe all Android communities are like this. The fragmentation of the development, even on one divice, definitely doesn't help. But it's not the most enjoyable place to read I've ever found.
This is all you need to know:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=9831517&postcount=3
The town hall closed too soon, closed 5pm eastern time. Sucks for us on the west coast. I was actually typing and clicked send when I noticed the forum already was closed.
scrizz said:
This is all you need to know:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=9831517&postcount=3
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I am sorry that is not all that I needed to know. This was a post for an idea that was not brough up in the town hall. yes I did read the full town hall and no it was never said in the full thread. So before you give a link please make sure of the Question.
That is another reason that you get people pissed off. You have people say "this is all that I need to know" but they did not even look at the full question. This was not a question of what happened in the town hall. It was more like please think of this.
The Bilble thread is a great place for people that are new to star reading about what to do and what not to do. but it really does not have a thing to do about develement.
Thanks for all the other posters I enjoyed the coments.
News from the Portal of XDA.
http://www.xda-developers.com/annou...addition-to-sharing-policy-on-xda-developers/
Posted August 22, 2012 at 6:00 pm by egzthunder1
We are going to deviate a bit from our regularly scheduled programming to let you know about an upcoming change in the rules in the XDA forums. As time has gone by, our site has grown by leaps and bounds from what it was a couple of years ago. With a membership base of over 4.5 million registered users and an average of 35-40 thousand people active at any given time, we need to ensure that this place can offer the best possible environment for all people, both experienced developers and people who come here looking to learn about mobile devices. Because of this reason, the rules of our site need to be amended from time to time to accommodate the needs and wants of such a large user base, but without losing our principles and forgetting what XDA was founded on in the first place.
Just a bit of background: XDA was a website founded by hackers and developers for hackers and developers. People coming here shared one common goal, which was to get more and more out of their expensive toys and they did so by reverse engineering, creating new code to expand the device’s capabilities, and doing things with hardware that most people cannot do (mainly due to lack of knowledge or technical ability). The site prospered to what it is today because these very same people knew that their collective ideas and efforts would yield more results if they collaborated by sharing what they knew with others. More often than not, this resulted in fantastic feats such as the original XDA online kitchen, the very first port of WM5 to the mythical HTC Blue Angel, and many more accomplishments that are stored in the depths of XDA’s forums.
XDA-Developers has always been a place for sharing knowledge. People spend countless hours on their projects and give back to the community in several different forms, either by releasing the complete work to the community, or by sharing its source and methods by which the work was conceived. The latter allows others to pick up the work and tweak it to improve it (think of the Linux kernel for this to make sense). XDA’s own foundation is much like that as well. However, often times, this concept of the sharing of knowledge gets confused with the concept of sharing everything. If you frequent our site, you will have undoubtedly come across a few threads were discussions about sharing are on going. Essentially, some people demand for work to be released or even think that they can take as they please without following rules already present on our site. Likewise, people sharing their work sometimes have rather bizarre ways of doing so, which has a bad tendency to develop in what we like to call “dev wars”.
We (administrators and moderators of this site) truly believe that intellectual property (IP) is a very important part of what is done on xda-developers. As such, we cannot and will not support any kind of action which forces a developer to share their work with others if the developer does not wish to do so. A developer of anything has rights over their work and as such he/she can choose to do with it as he/she pleases (give it away, share the source, burn it, give it to an orphanage, or eat it for breakfast). We support whatever decision is taken by its developer. Having said that, over the years people have found what can only be categorized as a loophole in our current sharing policy, and thus people are forced to do things in exchange for permissions to use certain pieces of work by others.
After a long deliberation with the entire moderator and administrator staff, we are implementing the following addition to our sharing rule (Rule 12) – revisions are in bold:
12. Using the work of others.
If you are developing something that is based on the work of another Member, you MUST first seek their permission, and you must give credit to the member whose work you used. If a dispute occurs about who developed / created a piece of work, first try to settle the matter by private message and NOT in open forum. If this fails then you may contact a moderator with clear evidence that the work was created by you.
Convincing evidence will result in copied work being removed. If there is no clear evidence you created the work then in the spirit of sharing all work will remain posted on the forums.
As an addition, developers have the right to hold exclusivity over their work for as long as it is deemed necessary by the dev or freely share it. However, if the work is claimed as exclusive, it must remain as such. No selective sharing will be allowed (ie allowing certain people to use it and not others). Should the dev decide to start sharing the work with others, the work automatically becomes fair game for all to use.
In regards to permissions, same rules remain for this but if permission was already given, unless there is a very valid reason, it cannot be revoked (same applies to major updates on the work). Under that same premise, permissions cannot be denied unless the work is exclusive or under severe circumstances.
In plain English: If you want to keep your work exclusive, go for it. However, if you are going to share your work, do it fairly.
These rules apply to all software posted on XDA (including but not limited to ROMs, RUUs, apps, games, kernels, themes, icons, etc) unless that software comes with a license that waives these rules.
The problem with the aforementioned permissions is that the rule never really stated anything regarding continuity or longevity of said permission. On top of that, selective sharing creates a massive problem on our site as it tends to give place to kanging (unauthorized copying and/or redistribution of work), fights between devs (so called “dev wars”), and tons of time wasted on investigations, which normally involves a large number of people from our staff. This needed to stop as it was reaching critical mass and high levels of anxiety were generated for no apparent reason on something that should be a hobby.
So, if you are a developer on this site and would like to keep your work as something exclusive, we encourage you to do it. If you would like to freely give it out so that others can use it and make it better, we encourage you to do it as well. However, we will no longer accept claims from anyone who picks and chooses who gets what. As stated in the rule, you either share or keep, but if you do share, do it fairly. Favoritism has created a great divide in our site and our community and it is only hurting development as a whole. People focus more on pointing fingers than they do on trying to create original work.
Permissions should still be sought as a matter of common courtesy, much like the original rule stipulated. However, unless a valid reason is provided, a simple “no, you cannot have it” will not suffice, especially if the work is being shared with others and permissions are denied out of spite.
Lets all work towards a new, rejuvenated XDA that is based on the core principles placed by the site’s founding fathers. Sharing of knowledge is what brought many of us together on this site and we should strive as a community to keep it that way. Please share your thoughts on this.
Thank you for reading.
Sincerely,
XDA-Developers Administration Team