Why Do We Still Use These Forums?

[mitosis]

I never post here, never have needed to especially while the Pandora still isn't released, but thought this was annoying enough to be post-worthy.

So when I go to the "official Open Pandora forums" that I am linked to by the official site, I get to a SUBFORUM on someone else's board... well why is this annoying? For one it doesn't really seem that "official" to outsiders when the board logo, url, etc are nothing to do with Pandora, and two we've only got 4 categories to try and fit our posts into: General talk, News zone, Dev corner, and Beta testing.

Wouldn't be a problem, except now what are we Pandora-ites (notice I say PANDORA-ites and not GAMEPARK-ites) to do when we just wanna talk about general mobile gaming and handheld computing related subjects that are only vaguely Pandora related? Well I would GUESS just use the general talk section...

BUT...

I see threads that are "general discussion" type threads such as the one about the new arm cortex chip or the one about how old all the Pandora fans are, but they've been moved into the generic gp32x "other stuff" forum... yet both those are significantly more relevant to Pandora than such things as a linux wall wart or if you'd rather get a speculated psp2.

And seriously, while we all wait for news from the devs about our preordered toys, what better way is there to pass the time than talk about those kind of things. I just see NO reason why some of those "unrelated" threads are allowed to stay in our general talk and others aren't.

The only REAL relationship between the forum for Gamepark created handhelds and the Open Pandora is that the very first idea for it came from here... other than that I see know reason why the Open Pandora is (still) here.

So what's with that? What do you other Pandora (pre)owners think of my angst? Does the lack of a dedicated forums bother you too?

 

[Kramy]

Doesn't bug me at all - it's convenient having an entire community with multiple gadgets on one forum.

Mind you, the admin seems to be taking his sweet time fixing the URL bug.

 

[Vorporeal]

I disagree. This is a community project that has developed on these community forums. There is no real need for Pandora-specific forums. This has been brought up many times before, but it was decided that it would be better not to split the community.

Also, in terms of only having the four different forums in the Pandora section, the devs have said that once the Pandora is actually released, more forums will be added in the Pandora section (similar to the GP32 and GP2X sections).

 

[mitosis]

I disagree. This is a community project that has developed on these community forums. There is no real need for Pandora-specific forums. This has been brought up many times before, but it was decided that it would be better not to split the community.

Also, in terms of only having the four different forums in the Pandora section, the devs have said that once the Pandora is actually released, more forums will be added in the Pandora section (similar to the GP32 and GP2X sections).

cool, I like to year your guys' 2 cents on this. My thinking was that it feels like you have to sift through all this unrelated stuff to actually get down to the raw, Pandora bits of it all. At least that's how it feels to me as someone who came here for Pandora, and not for gp32.

However, I am one of those possibly rare people who can see both sides of the coin and I totally know and get what you mean about not splitting the community... however, I'm still unconvinced as to how much this ACTUALLY benefits the Pandora community.

 

[PoisonedV]

for a variety of reasons, however my biggest personal reason is that i hate phpbb

 

[lulzfish]

This is annoying me too.
The new forum doesn't have any posts, all the dev updates and fun speculation goes on here.
And this forum is supposed to have an off-topic subforum, but I totally have no idea where it is.

One way or the other, get everything in one place.

 

[mitosis]

Also, when you say that it'd be better not to split the community, but upon some introspection it made me think of something just now.

I didn't even realize it when I was making the post, but a large part of why I even brought this up is that it feels (to me) like the community is divided right now... that thought is what even made me think of the question of why we don't have our own forums.

The reason why I say it feels divided to me is that we have all these different places for Pandora-related info, development, and communication that are all over the place... we've got openpandora.org, these forums, pandorawiki.org, and the slew of unofficial places like the wordpress blog (which does a great job I'm not denying those guys are awesome).

It just seems like whenever there's a thread about this or that Pandora-related development or news that the source of the info is always coming from "somewhere else" and not here. And by here I just mean wherever the current "home base" for Open Pandora is... which is currently these boards... which are a subforum on someone else's forum full of information found on other forums.

 

[Tom`]

Also, when you say that it'd be better not to split the community, but upon some introspection it made me think of something just now.

I didn't even realize it when I was making the post, but a large part of why I even brought this up is that it feels (to me) like the community is divided right now... that thought is what even made me think of the question of why we don't have our own forums.

The reason why I say it feels divided to me is that we have all these different places for Pandora-related info, development, and communication that are all over the place... we've got openpandora.org, these forums, pandorawiki.org, and the slew of unofficial places like the wordpress blog (which does a great job I'm not denying those guys are awesome).

It just seems like whenever there's a thread about this or that Pandora-related development or news that the source of the info is always coming from "somewhere else" and not here. And by here I just mean wherever the current "home base" for Open Pandora is... which is currently these boards... which are a subforum on someone else's forum full of information found on other forums.

as one of the wordpress guys, thanks :lol:

However, I am not too clear on what you're trying to say here. There are really only two places information comes from: openpandora.org and posts from the developers here. For people who don't like to go through the forums for news, we post anything significant on the wordpress blog (along with the wiki for hardware information and that kind of thing). I do not consider any of the other sites to have any community at all, really - the only people who visit those are already members of this community, as far as I am aware. So really, this is the logical place for Pandora forums.

Off-topic threads like the age thread or the wallwart thread or even the PSP2 threads should go in Off-topic (or probably "Other consoles" for the PSP2 thread), in order to keep this place for Pandora-specific discussion.

 

[WizardStan]

for a variety of reasons, however my biggest personal reason is that i hate phpbb
You forumist! That's not very socially aware.

 

[PSyMastR]

for a variety of reasons, however my biggest personal reason is that i hate phpbb
You forumist! That's not very socially aware.

No, he's right. phpBB sucks...

 

[senquack]

I am all for getting all the pandora idiots off these forums.

 

[MarkoeZ]

I am all for getting all the pandora idiots off these forums.

Depending on your definition of a 'Pandora Idiot' I could be one.

But i could also completely agree with you, and looking at the general posts in this section, i think that is the case

 

[hessiess]

Unless the issues with links and the like on this forum can be fixed soon, the Pandora project should move somewhere else. Theses issue's, and the fact that this forum appears to have nothing to do with the Pandora at first (due to the reasons mentioned in the first post) may give a bad first impression to someone who is new to the project.

Add to that, the Pandora teem carn't even be bothered to validate the homepage: validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fopenpandora.org%2Findex.php&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0.

 

[Iorgy77]

What happens in 4 years time when we are all onto the next gadget? new forum then as well?

There is a wealth of information here archived and ready for the next spiritual successor to the gp32 > gp2x > wiz or pandora.

It might all look unfamiliar and confusing to the new people but when you have been around a while it starts to make sense to keep our already small community together in one place.

 

[lulzfish]

I know, but the apostrophes and the links are killing me.

 

[TrevorBradley]

Even though the user communities for the GP32, GP2X and Pandora are somewhat different, the dev communities are more closely tied together, and this community is the right place for the discussion of the next open source handheld, in a distant future with flying cars and green alien women.

On a slight tangent, after the last outage we had here I posted to forums.openpandora.org asking if we needed to look at an overhaul for GP2x.com. As wonderful as the community is here, I really don't see the double quote issue getting fixed any time soon. It's starting to get embarrassing. We really do need to look at opening up things so that others can help admin the site and keep things current. This isn't to diminish the job hando's doing, but I think the community as a whole can help improve things here.

I'm concerned however that the issue is a dead horse, and the only thing that will move us to new forums/administration is when these forums go down one more time and don't come back up...

 

[Trip]

for a variety of reasons, however my biggest personal reason is that i hate phpbb
You forumist! That's not very socially aware.

No, he's right. phpBB sucks...

Agree 100 % I'm afraid.
phpbb forums just don't feel natural to read through at all. The words just don't flow man :unsure:

 

[Mithrildor]

This forum has all the topics. This forum has a large community , that will take a look sometimes (but most wont anymore when it is on another url.). This forums has alot good mods. This forum has gp2x experts.

 

[gruso]

I am all for getting all the pandora idiots off these forums.
I have an idea in relation to that, but I've never bothered to suggest it because I know it would be unpopular. If the forum index page was reshuffled to put the Pandora forums at the top of the list, Pandora General would catch all the stray newb posts that tend to end up in GP2X General. Wiz would be next down the list, then GP2X, then GP32. The original sections would then remain free of "Where Can I Buy Pandora" or "Will It Play Halo".

But despite the benefits, I don't think the more established members of the community would take kindly to the reshuffle.

 

[DisgruntleElf]

I am all for getting all the pandora idiots off these forums.

Those Pandora diehards aren't to blame. They're worn out from all the delays. They remain committed to the project but they have lost their enthusiasm. Unfortunately they are taking their frustrations on newcomers looking into purchasing Pandora and that's going to hurt Pandora's sales. To anyone new to these forums Pandora looks like a scam(using someone else's forum, no credit cards accepted, delays, no complete prototype, no firm release date) and abusive members aren't helping. There will be more delays and with every one of them more member will drop out. Customers are #1 when selling any product and I don't think the OP team is getting that message. Pandora may have one or two runs but I don't believe the entire first batch will be completed. Craig needs to reenergize this project fast if he wants to save it.