Database Info

Reminder about XDA

OK so i know this is the wrong forum, BUT I came across this and wanted to "bump" it so to speak. This was posted by kyphur in 08 and in a mods sig now. Please read and adhere to the spirit of the post. It is RIGHT ON!!!
I think what a lot of people forget is that this is not a "make my phone neat & kewl" place.
As implied by the name this is technically a Developers forum/community.
Now what does that mean? Well first off it means that there is an expectation that if you are here then you want to customize your device but rather than just installing something that someone packaged you want to understand how it works and maybe even enhance it yourself.
When I first came here with a Blue Angel it was a different environment. PDA Phones were not embraced by the general public because of the expense and complexity (I paid over $400 for my BA). A $400 phone 4 years ago was expensive, today the Tilt is $300 after rebates but with inflation & the rise in the cost of other devices and the fact that there are other sources out there giving them away for $150 our neat bit of kit has become popular with mainstream users.
Now we have a flood of new users who are asking not "How can I do this myself" but more like "Give me the quick fix" without caring to understand the process. See if you read the threads then you get to experience the learning process, you see how the issues were investigated and confirmed. Then you get to watch the different attempts at resolution and learn why some failed while others worked. That is called Development.
The NooB backlash is coming from users who have walked in the development shoes and is directed mainly at those who don't care for the journey but just want the end result or destination.
As a Development Forum we are just as much (if not more) about the journey. I've read so many comments like "I don't have time to read all of the threads" or "I don't care how it works, just that it does". These very statements are contrary to the heart & soul of XDA-Devs and that is why the backlash is so strong.
Let me be very clear on this: IF YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT UNDERSTANDING THE JOURNEY THEN YOU PROBABLY SHOULDN'T BE HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE.
XDA-Devs is about developers & hackers helping each other and working together to get the most out of our devices by understanding them better than most.
XDA-Devs is not about helping everyone who wants a "Kewl bit of kit" make their phone better than the guy next to him.
Now do we go kicking users off who never contribute anything, NO. We tolerate it to an extent. Where the toleration ends is when these users start diluting the usefulness of the forum by repeating the same questions over and over again.
You ask us to understand your position. Well if you want to benefit from our experience and time then I think it is only fair that you understand our position.

Maybe you can recommend an alternative site for people who just want the newest tweaks and software.

the idea is not that only developers should be looking at this site, but that this is a place where developers communicate with each other and the beneficiaries of their work. This is not the place for someone to post threads about general questions about how to use or mod their device. This is a place that will develop the capabilities of the android platform if it is allowed. Developers WILL abandon this forum if it becomes a bulletin board or a technical support site.....and if you need a question answered, there are other forums on THIS site to address those.

Agreed 100%. While developing for the Windows mobile, I also got the same thing. I would post a thread and WARN people of a certain things and tell them how to fix it. Then I'd get 30 pages of "geeze, you broke something. how do you fix it?" That gets annoying real fast. I would love it if this forum forced people to take a test before they could post in the development sections... Before that, they should only be able to post in the regular sections.
One thing that really bugs me is the fact that the newbs don't want to search but don't realize that they take OUR time to search FOR them. No one knows everything. Every developer on this site searches and learns. I know that if you put together all the time that I've spent on this site JUST researching and searching, it'd be MONTHS and MONTHS of non-stop, no sleep searching and researching. So why can't the average person search for 2 minutes? Is their time worth more than my time?
/rant - while talking on the phone so it might not make sense...

Pinesal said:
Maybe you can recommend an alternative site for people who just want the newest tweaks and software.
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There are thousands, but essentially all they do is copy stuff off here.
Like the post said, if you just want to root your phone so it can do 'cool stuff' and not give a **** about how the damn thing works then maybe you shouldn't be modding your phone (that wasn't aimed at you btw, just 'people' in general the market place is made up of 99% 'these people' who don't/can't read and it's pretty irritating.)
Agree with the post 100%, fantastic

we sadly are living in the (ME) world
there is such a huge gape beetween the 10-19 generation and 20-29
10-19 generation is living in such an easy world, they never had to blow into their nintendo cassettes , know how heavy a quantum bigfoot is or what RTFM mean's

You said it, this is in the wrong forum.
You're not an admin and although you can spend your time here (and pretty much all of your posts) reporting out-of-place threads, you're still not an admin.
People always wonder into communities and it always takes a while to learn the way things work. Mickey is doing a good job on closing and moving threads that are unrelated to development.
With that said...
Reported.

Agreed. It's really, really, really, really getting to me. I wish OP's had semi-moderator power. They could at least delete all necessary posts and ban that user - if required- for a certain amount of time from their thread only.

jubeh said:
You said it, this is in the wrong forum.
You're not an admin and although you can spend your time here (and pretty much all of your posts) reporting out-of-place threads, you're still not an admin.
People always wonder into communities and it always takes a while to learn the way things work. Mickey is doing a good job on closing and moving threads that are unrelated to development.
With that said...
Reported.
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ughh, no i'm not an admin, and no almost all my posts, or the majority, or a half are reported threads, but i do try to help out the mods when i can. they are not on all forums at all times and can use the help, and they have said as much.

Oh thank you thank you! People here should want to understand why thing the work as they work. Not just want their phones to look cool.

As it you wouldnt know it, i have been with xda for years well since the titan came out. before that i was modding an ipaq and of course the old palms. everyonce in awhile i lose interest and move on only to come back when i have something new(major a.d.d). i do write java as well as c and even c++(so on) i typically find this place useful to try stuff out and even set up my own custom rom just for me. i dont post because i can google. while i have many of my own questions i would like answered i simply dont ask most of the time(such as using micro kernels and modding app2sd to make the os have two options sd in or out. however the problem is not the generations or age difference or anything like that. its social systems outside of xda. posting a reply used to mean an answer or something useful. now its normal to simply post "great job". thats nice and all but maybe instead of complaining about it we should come up with a new system that improves xda. like a sorting system or sub thread system and set up catagorys for our replys. like thumbs up would be for the "good job". i know its hard to keep everyone happy but this is a forum first, a forum has design problems when you get the number of people xda has. use advanced search it helps a lot. a sorting system with requirements for certain catagorys would help devs. its not easy modding and getting it right and you cant do it alone. xda is the help even if its not your phone sometimes others have solutions too. such as winmo users putting android on their phones(yes i did it too my old titan for fun). things i learned and other devs learn can help us and vice versa. i have yet to find bad technology only poorly thought out ideas that could have been. which is why we mod.
p.s. wtf is up with palm and blackberry ads all the time.

Most of those kids just want the answer or fix in the next 3min. with perfect steps or a patch that supposedly will fix and hack their device,after that they´ll never show up.
All they want is to show off without bothering to read.

I totaly understand. I do feel sometimes that certain devs do get a bit annoyed with people who just want to fix the phone and not understand. I'm not linux or coding wiz. But whe I got here in may I was one of the people who just wanted me phone to be better than urs. I still have that to some extent but I have developed more of a "how and what is causeing this issue" attitude. I try to contribute as best as I can. Helping out over at q&a as best as I can. I enjoy xda and without my days would be more boring than what the are now. I dunno I guess I'm just rambling. Bottom line is I have tried to correct my attitude toward modding. Hell I even post my email so users can drop a line if they need help.

i am 20 and i fondly remember blowing into my nes super nes and genesis games.

i am pretty new to XDA. when i first found this site all i wanted was a quick fix. now i am getting more intrested in the actual dev aspect. i want to be able to create my own rom eventualy. yes i do find myself asking stupid questions and getting some foul responses but in my opinion no question is a stupid one. only the one not asked. yes alot of people just want a fix but there are new users who want to learn. like me. so i appreciate the help i have recieved from most members. and i alwasy appoligise for my stupidity. so dont get down on all noobs because alot of us want to learn and the only way to is to ask.

saprano614 said:
i am pretty new to XDA. when i first found this site all i wanted was a quick fix. now i am getting more intrested in the actual dev aspect. i want to be able to create my own rom eventualy. yes i do find myself asking stupid questions and getting some foul responses but in my opinion no question is a stupid one. only the one not asked. yes alot of people just want a fix but there are new users who want to learn. like me. so i appreciate the help i have recieved from most members. and i alwasy appoligise for my stupidity. so dont get down on all noobs because alot of us want to learn and the only way to is to ask.
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nobody is getting down on noobs. ONLY the site users who FAIL to post questions and general comments in the correct forum

jaaronmoody said:
nobody is getting down on noobs. ONLY the site users who FAIL to post questions and general comments in the correct forum
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Just want to make a statement befor someone did.

I thank you for this post. I came to this forum a long time ago I have learned quite a bit and appreciate everything that is done here. There are very skillful people that are on here and I wish I had the amount of skill then thesemodders, hackers, developers etc... have I keep my mouth shut unless i feel there is some thing that i know how to answer, i have never complained about a single rom i simply research what can be done to change for fix it, all answers rely in a search somewhere either here or google. I just wish other people would do the same then we would be able to prevent a 300+ page threads where only about 25 pages are worth anything.
look at the amount of posts from someone who knows they are barley able to contrubute(but do what he can) and been here this long. compared to people who have been here dont have much to contribute but love to post everything that comes to thier minds.
Join Date
22nd October 2006
Total Posts
89

samygent said:
we sadly are living in the (ME) world
there is such a huge gape beetween the 10-19 generation and 20-29
10-19 generation is living in such an easy world, they never had to blow into their nintendo cassettes , know how heavy a quantum bigfoot is or what RTFM mean's
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
HEY!
im 18 and clearly remember blowing into those damn games to make them work. but when they worked, so much fun i still think theyre better than the crappy xbox and ps3 games of today... but thats just me. lol

pleeease yall! let's keep THIS thread on topic! LOL!!

A request to all the devs here, about including info in first post.

This NOT ment to be *****ing, I AM grateful for all the great work being done, But i do WISH every single dev could include this in their first post in their ROMs thread:
-What the ROM is based on (HTC framework, ADP, ADP with Sense from Dream, Sense from Hero etc.)
->What works (or not) of:
* LED
* bluetooth
These are common problems with HERO ROMs, and if every dev posted this info, it would be great. For me non-LED= not usable, and for some periods of time (ie. when I'm driving much), so is no BT
->Included apps.
*Especially important are sms-spamming apps such as myfaves - coud be critical to know about.
->recommended compache settings, swapiness etc, what is used in ROM as standard for these values.
We see every Hero-thread filling up with questions about BT, LED, what HERO-version, and what framework, and whatnot. Taking 2mins to post this info could help save so much time,and so much spam/question in the ROM thread.
Apps added/removed and the other stuff is also higly relevant to non-HERO roms.
Again, this is constructive criticism aka a humble suggestion, not an angry demand from some jerk with e-penile problems. (Or so I'd like to believe, at least.)
If anyone has any suggestion as to what other info you would like to see in a ROM announcement? Post it here, maybe we can "help" the devs out by making a complete template we would like them to follow. Input from devs highly appreciated too, ofc.
I know there are toher things that shoul also be listed, such as SPL and radio required etc., although I believe almost everyone includes it. Most devs include most of the items on the list too, but many do not include all of it.
Also, I am sorry for posting this in this category, but this is where the ROMs are posted and the devs can see it.
I hope this thread has its place here. Different people are lokking for different things, and both the user and devs benefit from the user knowing what they get. (It would hopefully limit the number of "spam" questions from users if the first post contained all this information, we know many people are afraid of the search button. Also, it would be easier to wield the ban hammer on people whoe doesn't even bother to look at the simple list in the first post, and waste other peoples time.)
If a dev included enough information, ROM lists with information abut different ROMs would also be much easier to maintain for the good people making them.

It may make things more organized, but it means devs have to update the list, and pay less attwntion to -actual ROM development.
And in my opinion, a little trial and error never hurt anyone.

TermyJW said:
It may make things more organized, but it means devs have to update the list, and pay less attwntion to -actual ROM development.
And in my opinion, a little trial and error never hurt anyone.
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This is TRUE!
I so hope that Hero ROM's on donut are much more snappier! I'm addicted, I want a ROM to use for a few months! Hehe.

Yeah, it would be nice if there was a template developers could follow for posting. It would make thing's so much smoother.
Possibly in the title of the post have;
[ROM] [SENSE] "Title Here"
[ROM] [PULSE] "Title Here"
[ROM] [MOTOBLUR] "Title Here"
[ROM] [1.6] "Title Here"
[ROM] [1.5] "Title Here"

I agree with the OP there are times where i i can't flash 5 different ROMs in a day and i skip over some because of lack of info and screenshots. Maybe the community can build a template that the ROM devs can use?

damnitpud said:
I agree with the OP there are times where i i can't flash 5 different ROMs in a day and i skip over some because of lack of info and screenshots. Maybe the community can build a template that the ROM devs can use?
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Are you thinking about getting back into making themes?

not gonna happen

jubeh said:
not gonna happen
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word im too lazy

they already spend there time developing the roms, i dont think they have the time to make the "proper layout"

Binary100100 said:
Are you thinking about getting back into making themes?
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I have been playing around with some images, made changes for my own phone but haven't done much else. I did just get laid off from my job so if i go the unemployment route you will definitely see me more in these forums. If i can't find a job soon i plan on getting into Java programming(i have a few app ideas) and possibly making my own ROMs. But we have to see where the job market takes me.
To stay on topic, the devs do spend a lot of time dev'n and having a template in a txt file would make posting easier for them. I have made a few threads and i can tell you making a layout for a post isn't that easy and is not much fun. If we can make an empty template that they only have to fill in their info...they would be doing the same amount of work on the post, just easier cause its all laid out for them.
We would need a sticky for it and have the devs vote on it or something.

That's a great idea it would be so much easier plus people won't be trashing threads with dumb ass questions is this for G1? Does this work or does it still do that and so on....
I mean before they upload the Rom they know most of the bugs so just saying known issues r these and that would help and just knowing what's new in the release doesn't help just confuses most of the noobs here...I'm one of them.
A little off topic but I'm a recruiting officer in a PC gaming community and I review clan applications, there were times when main application was down so I just made a sticky Thread with a template of the application to fill up and post it as a new thread
I mean look all of the devs pretty much do that already anyhow, every thread they make look exactly as the other 1 we just need a clean template that they all could use and just made it as a sticky thread and lock it so every1 could use it.

Zarboz said:
word im too lazy
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If you're making a ROM and posting it on xda, you obviously want other people to use it.
If the first post is sloppy and not informative or up to date. Less people will use your ROM. Thus, less people will test it. Therefore, you won't be able to figure out the bugs. If you're sloppy with info, you'll lose, not us.
Something that should be standard:
A proper title like suggested earlier such as [ROM] [1.6 - Pulse] [******]
(none of that [ROM] ***MghtyMax 1.9.1*** "WHAT A FEELING!" stuff....Sorry, but it's just plain horrible.)
Another thing should be a list of features, things that work, things that don't.
Screenshots are also very nice and descriptive. A lot of new users might not know what Pulse, Hero, etc. looks like.
If you take the time to work on a ROM, you have the time to work on a nice looking first post. Don't half ass your work. It makes you look unprofessional.

I agree with the first poster, also MD5 hashes would be nice.

As damnitpud mentions, this would probably make it easier for devs, not harder. This is about *not* forccing them to make the proper layout themselves, but serve as a pre-made basis for them to fill in. In ready made bb-code ofc.
Since the mighty max-rom was brought up, this is noe ROM i did not download and flash immedeatly beacause I couldn't find info about BT working or not. Also would like to know if it were the SENSE from Dream or Hero. And some other details.
As I have time to sit down and flash my phone maybe two days a week, tops, I would like to know what I want to try beforehand. I also don't want to read four hundred post with questions that sometimes are answered in the first post, sometimes in the thread, sometimes not at all. But IF they had been answered in first post - and especially if it were in standard list that all/most devs used, it would be hard to miss it, and save a lot of stupid and/or lazy people nagging.
md5 hashes is absolutely something that should be on such a list, ohnoezmahfone. That is certainly lacking, and quite important for people with a good-for-nothing-ISP or net by 3G modem etc.

Someone make up a template. There will always be someone who will volunteer to do it for the developer.

All great ideas.
Especially for the sake of SEARCH.
Example:
I enter a search for "bluetooth working hero" and up pops 4000 unhelpful results most where 1000 noobs are asking if it works or not without doing the proper research in the prior posts.
An all informative 1st post would reduce this and the unnecessary flaming that follows (also part of results)
Also, it would also be real nice if everyone keep their personal lives to themselves.
Noone cares if your "flashing [other irrelavant ROM] now because BT aint working for Hero yet. This also shows up in results.
If I want you to kno whats on my device, i'll put it in my sig
I know i just made "BT working Hero" one more result longer [4001] but i had to vent. Sometimes searching can be very annoying and cumbersome.
Less results means less hassle for devs and users.
Once again, great ideas

XDA lossing members

It seems that since more developers are leaving XDA, and members are flocking to there forums or other android forums. Now I know XDA for quiet some time. I just wish they change some of the ways to certain things. We probably have all developers and more. Support now for the thunderbolt is getting less. Developers who supported the thunderbolt are harder to find. At least for me, I feel like I might need a change very soon since the support for the thunderbolt has lessen.
All I am trying to say is why XDA can't just adapt and have disclaimers for users to understand they need to READ to understand there device and what they are doing to it. Root , and roms updating has risk. People need to ensure they cover every side they read before they do anything on there device.

I like the "thanks" system on xda but to me it really seems there needs to be a way of giving individual posts negative feedback. most social surfing websites have this feature and the ones that implement it well really improve their posting community. The steps are quite simple:
1. Create a social currency (already exists in the thanks meter system)
2. promote the currency so that users really value it, create a culture based on the currency (hardest step)
3. give users the power to say "yay or nay" on any post and again push the culture to participate
4. Add to or detract from the users currency balance based on the votes their posts receive.
5. Below a certain threshold the posts become invisible unless you specifically want to see them
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA App

mthe0ry said:
I like the "thanks" system on xda but to me it really seems there needs to be a way of giving individual posts negative feedback. most social surfing websites have this feature and the ones that implement it well really improve their posting community. The steps are quite simple:
1. Create a social currency (already exists in the thanks meter system)
2. promote the currency so that users really value it, create a culture based on the currency (hardest step)
3. give users the power to say "yay or nay" on any post and again push the culture to participate
4. Add to or detract from the users currency balance based on the votes their posts receive.
5. Below a certain threshold the posts become invisible unless you specifically want to see them
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA App
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You raise a good idea, but I think it can be much simpler. A simple + or - for each post would allow users to "rate" the posts. Then a simple filter that will allow users to only show posts with rating s above a certain level would suffice. Useless drivel and repetitive questions will quickly disappear from the filtered results. Any such change more than likely requires some significant updates to the forum though.
As has also been proven before, if large entities don't adapt to changing times, they can die. I don't think XDA is in danger of this yet, but it isn't quite as rich of a resource as it once was.

mthe0ry said:
I like the "thanks" system on xda but to me it really seems there needs to be a way of giving individual posts negative feedback. most social surfing websites have this feature and the ones that implement it well really improve their posting community. The steps are quite simple:
1. Create a social currency (already exists in the thanks meter system)
2. promote the currency so that users really value it, create a culture based on the currency (hardest step)
3. give users the power to say "yay or nay" on any post and again push the culture to participate
4. Add to or detract from the users currency balance based on the votes their posts receive.
5. Below a certain threshold the posts become invisible unless you specifically want to see them
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Click to collapse
I think this is a good idea, however I don't think it should be as simple as a hitting a negative button similar to the thanks button because it wouldn't be used right most of the time. Say I disagree with your post above, that doesn't mean its a bad post and should receive negative feedback, it just means our opinions differ (though they don't, just an example). If there were a few reasons like; trolling, negative comment towards fellow member (including racism/sexism/any ism's, lol), and maybe a repeat topic/question for all the new threads that get started multiple times a day because the op didn't look for the answer first (which would work better if there was a sticky with info or links to info such as what root and other root related things are and links to how to's). Then once posts reach a certain number of negative feedback for the same "offense" that comment would then be hidden with the reason shown.

Where is everyone going to?
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA App

As far as I know only 2 dev teams left and that due to being treated poorly by people not taking the time to read through threads and follow instructions.
Both of their roms are still available at their personal sites
teambamf.com and themikmik.com

teambamf.net
hopefully they'll get their issues sorted out because the site hasn't been solid yet due to apparent dos attacks.

kudosmog said:
teambamf.net
hopefully they'll get their issues sorted out because the site hasn't been solid yet due to apparent dos attacks.
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Site is back now for Team BAMF
Trident said:
We're back!
wifiguru and I have been working tirelessly all night moving Team BAMF Forums over to a new server and installing a fresh copy of vBulletin. After doing so, we noticed that our issues were not quite resolved as there was a bot submitting approximately 1000 requests per second to port 80 which was causing the server to reach a state of low memory and overload the CPU. We've beefed up our firewall and limited the amount of requests a single IP address can issue per second which should prevent such an attack in the future. Let it be known that this was indeed an attack on our website though. Pretty lame and immature, huh?
Anyways, we're terribly sorry for the downtime! I don't think we'll be seeing much of that in the days to come..
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you really think this site and smartphone growth/development isn't bigger than the TBolt, BAMF and Chingy? Maybe a big blow to you personally or Tbolt community here but come on XDA probably has WAY more members than it had last year and will have WAY more next year than it has this year. And you can bet these "flocks" going to their personal sites are still small and will always be compared to XDA's Tbolt (and other) communities. I'm personally not joined to the hip to any dev's work so if I really dont like the dev's alternate site or there isn't sufficient information there's always another virtually identicle or simular enough rom on XDA to switch over to.

I came here to post about my experience with rooted TBolt, but I cannot post in those threads... Not enough posts. This is very frustrating. It pushes me to go search some alternative ways to talk with developers.

Bad spelling and grammar don't help, either...

stanlalee said:
you really think this site and smartphone growth/development isn't bigger than the TBolt, BAMF and Chingy? Maybe a big blow to you personally or Tbolt community here but come on XDA probably has WAY more members than it had last year and will have WAY more next year than it has this year. And you can bet these "flocks" going to their personal sites are still small and will always be compared to XDA's Tbolt (and other) communities. I'm personally not joined to the hip to any dev's work so if I really dont like the dev's alternate site or there isn't sufficient information there's always another virtually identicle or simular enough rom on XDA to switch over to.
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You really think tbolt devs are the only ones leaving?
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using XDA Premium App

For those of you familiar with Linux distros and their forums, think of it like this: devs here are more like the kind of people you'd find on the Arch or Gentoo forums--they believe (rightfully) that anyone who even considers flashing roms should already know the answers to these questions. And if they honestly don't, the documentation or Google are only a click away.
Now the newbie users, they're more like the kind of people you find on ubuntu forums- people who got sick of the boring factory junk that their device came with, so they switched to this new thing they heard about through a friend and realized too late that it's not as stupid simple as clicking 'next' again and again when installing programs in windows.
You can see the clash that these groups would have...
Two things: there should be a 'newbie' subforum just like EVERY other major project on the internet does, where the questions would be asked and FAQ's could be posted and pinned. And second, the lack of all-inclusive documentation needed to bridge the gap between the two groups is only forcing them further apart.
I had no problem flashing bamf sense 3.0, or changing scripts in init.d because I'm used to looking up the answers on the internet and know how to tell what's junk and what's not. But a lot of users don't. Hence, the need for an all-inclusive newbie subforum with how-to's and FAQ's and such.
I'd be more than happy to contribute to such an endeavor with the admins' blessing too
sent from my rooted Thunderbolt with das BAMF 3.0 rc4

admiralspark said:
because I'm used to looking up the answers on the internet and know how to tell what's junk and what's not. But a lot of users don't. Hence, the need for an all-inclusive newbie subforum with how-to's and FAQ's and such.
I'd be more than happy to contribute to such an endeavor with the admins' blessing too
sent from my rooted Thunderbolt with das BAMF 3.0 rc4
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Exactly my issue...I know what I want to with my TBOLT, but haven't bc of all the junk out on the web for rooting. Id love some one on one support if anyone is willing to help
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA App

BAMF has said repeatedly that they did not leave due to anything any users said/did. They left for another reason.
Chingy left for some user related issues still contributes greatly to the community.
Both groups still contribute to TB development and will continue to from their sites. Either way most of the development spawns across multiple forums anyway so I dont see any development slowing down in the future.

From the looks of most of the questions asked on the thunderbolt subforum (since many would be better asked or looked for in the general forums), I would gather that most that frequent it think that this forum == xda, which is not true. Compared to the other forums, this one is far more juvenile and dramatic. People are not "leaving" in droves in any other forums nor are developers. Sometimes I think the thunderbolt was the officially endorsed phone of 4chan.
Anyways, xda is not dying. One would think that though if all they read is the thunderbolt forums though
I dont' mind helping the noobs, but sometimes the more obvious questions can wear on you and all you want to say is RTFM, which is probably what the developers that left wanted to say as well. I don't think those that do say such things do it out of being mean, but do it more out of frustration that all the help and advice they might give in the past is just in vain/futility.
As already mentioned. There are two crowds on xda. The mint/ubuntu/what is ubuntu types that will 99% of the time need spoon fed even after helping past the basic stuff and the arch/debian/slackware types that know how to look for information themselves. Those two groups rarely ever seem to "get" each other anyways as also mentioned.

I think as far as the developers are concerned they just want to do their own thing and that's more than understandable! What I don't understand is why shoot yourself in the foot by leaving a huge market like xda (4 million members). If it's personal reasons I can understand but what better way to get more attention than being on multiple forums.
Xda isn't perfect and never will be but I'm not giving up hope that it can be better and moderation is gonna go way up from here on out that's a promise. Another problem is there aren't many mods in thunderbolt section (2 that i know of) but I plan on bringing that up so we can get some more help in here.
The noob sub forum probably won't happen, don't want to alienate new members. What can be done is improved stickies which is being done as I type. There will always be members who ask before searching but with improved stickies it will reduce it.

Some moderating from the mods would be nice too. They should be deleting unuseful posts like "search" and cursing. The problem is when you search for issues you find other threads but the conversation inside them is "search" followed by a pissing contest. Stickies with more information would help and I like the feature that searches for you when you create a new thread. Everyone needs to respect each other here. That's when the mods need to step in and start laying down the ban hammer and warnings. I'd love to help in that department.

Agreed, but a small team will have all sorts of trouble trying to moderate a userbase of 4 million...but we could all help to reduce the number of questions if there was a single source of information to send new users to. So, I'll begin writing up some things tonight (RL class for now).
On a side note, if you'd like some one-on-one help, I'm more than happy to do so through pm/chat/skype/whatever. Everyone started at square one once upon a time
sent from my rooted Thunderbolt with das BAMF 3.0 rc4

I've already created a sticky guide, I'm still working on it as I go feel free to add what ever yall feel necessary!
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1168433

[Q] how can i help and get involved?

i want to get involved in the community and help bring great things to this device and any other that i can. i have a degree in computer information systems, do systems imaging, and know enough to get by, tweak, and customize, but linux was never taught to me . it is pretty straight forward. i understand the concept, language, and most of the commands, but i am not a programmer by trade. i do know that you don't even have to actually know a lot of languages because, in many cases, there is another program that you can tell what you want to happen and it will write the base language for you. if somebody can point me in the right direction and/or give me a task to help them with, i would love to do so.
thank you
don't mean to sound ignorant. just wanna help.

That's a fantastic attitude, and welcome to the doubleshot forums.
The MT4G Slide Compendium is a sticky at the top of general here, and is a great starting point to familiarize yourself with the doubleshot forums. It has links to a lot of the relevant threads scattered around here, as well as some explanations of terminology and so forth. It's designed to help orient you with everything we have going on here.
Here is a link to my Guide Index, which is a collection of tutorials and such i've put here and is also in my sig. The bottom of the post has links to a lot of information about the device off-site, manufacturer and so forth.
One of the best things you can do if you aren't contributing code is to contribute documentation. How to do basically anything you want to do is spread out all over XDA as a whole. If information can be referenced and concentrated here into the MT4GS sub-forums, it would make it easier for people to develop for the device.
Not having to scour XDA at large to figure out how to do something, and someone taking the time to explain how to do it here and provide links to track down more information is always helpful.
I know in searching XDA to learn how to do these things, it's been helpful for others to have been making summaries and guides on how to do them - sharing it here paves the way for others who come behind you and want to learn how to do what you're learning.
And if you aren't interested in posting guides on how to do the things you've learned, then just taking the time to answer questions people ask on the board about the device if you know the answer is a way to be helpful. The longer you hang out here, the more you learn, and the people coming behind you are curious too.
The longer you hang out here, too, you come to learn where information is and in what threads - you can direct newer people by answering questions with links to the relevant threads or posts since you already know what they are. It only takes a few minutes to track down the information if you have a good idea of where it is.
Because XDA is pretty much where we figure out a lot of the new stuff, the board grows randomly, and information gets scattered with pieces here and there in threads to solve problems and such. When people ask questions you can link to the scattered pieces and by doing so it helps index everything we are learning.
Basically, the desire to help is all that you need and these are some ways people can do so without in-depth technical knowledge. You're probably combing the boards learning things anyway, so when people have similar questions explaining what you know helps us all.
We all have different ways of learning, so sharing how you did can teach others new methods and ways of doing beyond just how to do the specific thing itself.
It sounds like you are as excited about all this as some of us are here, and with a device like the doubleshot in your hands I don't blame you.
Any questions just ask, as long as you aren't posting random questions in the dev sections it's all good.
Once again, welcome to the MT4GS forums, you'll have a blast with us here.
Edit:
Kernel stuff is in C flavor language, Android stuff itself is mostly Java, and if you don't have the program Notepad-plus-plus you should pick that up for making mostly all of your general coding edits on the computer with.

Thank you. I am excited. My first device that I toyed with was an htc leo 1024 (us), so I had an edasy entry into the world just because there are so many resources available for it. I will start by posting a couple of guides about things that I know were difficult to grasp/follow when I first started. Thank you very much for the directions and taking the time to post them and reply to me. Time to study...
Sent from my myTouch_4G_Slide using XDA App

That's fantastic.
This is my second Android device, first phone - the other one is a Nook Color.
Much like how you say having a lot of dev interest in the device you came from helped you (and man, does it ever) the advantage the Nook Color had was it's unbrickable. It boots from the MicroSD first, before internal memory, and you can run a self-contained copy of Android from the MicroSD card.
I got a chance to break it in so many different ways, (who needs a build.prop ... let's just delete that) and all I had to do was pop out the memory card and flash a fresh copy of CM7 onto it.
The internal memory is still the stock Barnes & Noble skinned operating system, hasn't been rooted or anything, yet I was still able to get the full-on Android experience in a safe play zone.
Coming to this phone, it's taught me ahead of time what I can and can't mess with before bad things start to happen, and it's a lot easier to play with this stuff if you know where the lines are. The ones you get in trouble if you cross.
It really wasn't until I got my hands on this device that I started to get into a lot of dev work on Android - but now i'm having an absolute blast with it and this device is pretty impressive.
I can't wait to read about what tricks you've picked up along the way, i'm always looking for an opportunity to be educated. Take some time and see what we've got laid out here, in some cases you may be able to add to existing threads instead of making new ones for duplicate topics.
The MT4GS is what, 6 months old now? We'll keep getting more people in here as they come to their upgrades or get warrantied up to this device. I'm eagerly awaiting more devs to end up in our corner of the forums, i'm curious to see what kind of cool things people can make the device do.
The more information we have organized and mapped out about the device and how to do things with it, the easier it gets for people who come behind because they don't have to re-invent the wheel just to get something done.
It's mind boggling to me how much i've learned in the past year here at XDA, especially in the last few months. It's all because people take the time to sit down and explain how they've done the things they've done and are excited to share their discoveries.
Having this device since before root was viable, i've watched this section of XDA grow from literally just a handful of threads into what it is now - pretty soon we'll have a majority of the resources right here for people to just show up and get work done with minimal fuss.
I know my dev time is hit or miss, sometimes I have days on end, other times not - one way i've been trying to help when i'm not around is leaving how-to's and guides behind me that people can reference while i'm gone.
There's still a whole lot that I haven't even gotten into yet, and i'm very appreciative of people taking the time to share some cool discovery or trick that's made their life a lot easier.
(sometimes I ramble a bit, especially when on boring conference calls)
I came to XDA to learn how to do some fun stuff with my Nook Color, and maybe learn how to write apps for the market. Here I am writing ROMs and nowhere close to putting any apps in the market. With the library of knowledge that XDA is everytime I sit down at the keyboard I learn something new, I wish i'd found this place a long long time before I did - it feels like home.

that's pretty cool about the nook color. i may have to pick one up to play with. i'm sure there are all kinds of neat things to be figured out (and easily implemented) with a device that boots from an external source before the internal.
i got pretty lucky with my hd2. as soon as i saw that there was a way to do it, i had to figure it out (of course). however, instead of reading all of the instructions and bulletins on correct procedure, like an intelligent person... you can probably guess where i'm going with that... and VIOLA! an expensive paperweight.
i was very lucky that phone is setup the way it is and for resources like you and some of the other devs and especially the others that learned by trial and error and took the time to post their experiences.

XDA...Developers????

I'm not going to draw this out, but this site is not what it used to be. Technical discussions these days are rare jewels. I realize visitors pay the bills, but I feel like the site is on the downhill side of a slippery slope. I can't say I know what the ultimate answer is, but enforcement of the existing XDA rules would be a big step:
Stop letting nonsense get posted in the development forums. I know there are a limited number of moderators, but '[OMG][MOD] build.prop Super Ultra blah blah' nonsense should not be tolerated. Is this sorcery or development?
Enforce the ...If you didn't create 'it'... rule.
Define creating 'it.' Home-grown applications don't qualify as development, but 'kitchen' type ROMs do? Deodexing an OEM ROM using a tool developed by some else is development now?
I should stop. This post was supposed to be short. I love XDA, but I think we've lost focus and tolerated too much. Just my opinion.

I guess you missed all the town hall meetings, 10 post rule discussions, page upon page of wtf's in the mod request thread. Been going on for a while now.

bedoig said:
Enforce the ...If you didn't create 'it'... rule.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
*Looks at your avatar....*
If everyone started enforcing that in everyday life Then Apple would be in big trouble..
Apples development process:
Does it exist? ------> Patent it, and sue the people currently building it
Is it a generic well used shape or idea? ------> Patent it, and sue the people currently using it.
Is it an abstract idea used in science fiction that we have no way of phisically crating yet --------> Patent it untill someone else does work out how to create it and then buy them out / sue them.
Dubbl standudz much?
LOLZ

needs to be a fanboy argument filter here

Would it be a good idea to maybe add some people in the XDA stuff so they can be screening what posts get posted on those threads? Kind of like someone has to approve the post first and then allow it to be posted.

bedoig said:
I'm not going to draw this out, but this site is not what it used to be. Technical discussions these days are rare jewels. I realize visitors pay the bills, but I feel like the site is on the downhill side of a slippery slope. I can't say I know what the ultimate answer is, but enforcement of the existing XDA rules would be a big step:
Stop letting nonsense get posted in the development forums. I know there are a limited number of moderators, but '[OMG][MOD] build.prop Super Ultra blah blah' nonsense should not be tolerated. Is this sorcery or development?
Enforce the ...If you didn't create 'it'... rule.
Define creating 'it.' Home-grown applications don't qualify as development, but 'kitchen' type ROMs do? Deodexing an OEM ROM using a tool developed by some else is development now?
I should stop. This post was supposed to be short. I love XDA, but I think we've lost focus and tolerated too much. Just my opinion.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I see your point of view. But if we (the XDA Community) dont tolarate, first attempts to do something for the others, wouldnt it be inefficient ? Some people start here with little things and later they make ROMs that anybody loves.
Themed Roms, deodexed Roms etc - should be in the Apps and Themes Section or in a collection thread Just an idea of me

needs to be a fanboy argument filter here

For starters, you could do your part too, by posting this in the CORRECT forum.
Sent from my Desire S using xda premium

So optimization of roms isn't development? Perhaps only alpha roms should be posted because it just boots on the device and everybody should just try optimize features on their own because it's too much work to make the system error free on everyone's devices. I'd then just stick to only stock roms or buy an iphone kthx.
Sent from my HD2 using xda vip edition

Hello,
As you can see I'm still new here, trying to read more than post, but as I understand, the "developing process" is a wide area incorporating all of the following processes:
* actual programming of software/firmware
* optimization of roms and/or kernels
* rom customization (app/configuration/etc wise)
* many more
While one might take part in many of the processes, others might focus on smaller parts or more specific processes (due to many different reasons), but there is absolutely no reason to look down on them. We're all (or most) here because at the end, we want the same result - a good running system.

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