Forum etiquette: Newcomers and oldtimers

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I think the Forum Rules make a lot of sense and I largely agree with your take.

We oldtimers could make newcomers feel more welcome by being less irritable. And, as suggested in the FAQ, sometimes it is better to just avoid a thread than to reply.

I would like to ask you, all of you, to consider what it is like being in the oldtimers’ shoes. We’ve had an influx of people asking the same questions over and over. We’ve had an influx of business strategists presenting long AI generated plans of action as their first post. Often, the first few paragraphs even show that they have not quite understood the basics.

We try to cope as best we can, but please understand that this is tiring - we’re all just doing this in our spare time and out of passion for Sailfish OS. The reward for engaging with someone who does their part is huge, while engaging e.g. with an AI-by-proxy is exhausting.

Also, just as oldtimers should be respectful to newcomers, newcomers need to be respectful to every other forum member. That includes trying to understand the situation and not ascribe everything to “gatekeeping”, “bad attitude” (edit:) or elitism.

Now, an early section in the FAQ - Sailfish OS Forum deals with some of this. Just as one rule says that you sometimes should not reply, there is another rule saying that sometimes you should not post:

Help us make this a great place by always working to improve the discussion in some way, however small. If you are not sure your post adds to the conversation, think over what you want to say and try again later.

Another rule outlines an expectation to check what has already been said before posting:

One way to improve the discussion is by discovering ones that are already happening. Spend time browsing the topics here before replying or starting your own, and you’ll have a better chance of meeting others who share your interests.

So, do your part. All of us have cooperate to make the forum enjoyable. Oldtimers need to show understanding of newcomers’ needs, and newcomers need to respect the time and effort of other forum members (old or new).

Whoever you are, please do search before posting. Please do provide as much detail as you can upfront. Stay on topic, don’t be shy to start a new thread rather than straying off topic.

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Is the “Get Started” category maybe better suited for such a thread (optionally with pinning the topic there)? What do the moderators think?

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OTOH, we already have Reminder of the rules using this forum .

So no need to start a new thread on this?

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I mostly agree with your opinion, but there are some phrases that were formulated in an unnecessarily one-sided bossy way. Since you created this tgread, I assume you expect a discussion, So here are my comments regarding the tone of some parts of your comment:

I would like to ask you, all of you, to consider what it is like being in the oldtimers’ shoes. We’ve had an influx of people asking the same questions over and over. We’ve had an influx of business strategists presenting long AI generated plans of action as their first post. Often, the first few paragraphs even show that they have not quite understood the basics.

This is an interesting and pretty off-putting comment for a simple reason: it has the false presumption that newcomers are new to this world!! No, we are just new this forum. That’s all. Otherwise many of us are maintainers of massive OpenSource projects and communities, that are perhaps much larger than Sailfish.

Oldtimers need to show understanding of newcomers’ needs, and newcomers need to respect the time and effort of other forum members (old or new).

This is also formulated incorrectly imho. You are implying that the oldtimers (whatever that means) should only be understanding towards newcomers, but newcomers must be understanding towards everyone (i.e., oldtimers can be nasty to each other).

I believe it is healthier and more logical to scratch the titles (oldtimer & newcomer), generalize the sentence and say “everyone should be understanding towards other sailors”. Do you agree?

we’re all just doing this in our spare time and out of passion for Sailfish OS

Perhaps, but it begs the question: Why? Nither Jolla is a non-profit nor Sailfish is an OpenSource project. Jolla is earnings millions or Euros, and for sure can afford to hire (full-time or part-time) moderators. This is their business afterall!! This is their livelihood.

On the other hand, we FLOSS maintainers are dealing with all of the issues you mentioned in our own projects, and yet we try to be more inclusive and welcoming.

Whoever you are, please do search before posting.

Fair. Then please add it to FAQ if this is a rule, otherwise scolding people for it is wrong. Well, imho scolding people for duplicated post in this forum is wrong regardless of it being a rule or not. But this is my personal opinion.

At the end, thank you for spending time on writing this relatively long text and expressing your opinion and your take. Having [healthy] discussion is what helps us improve. As I said earlier, I largely agree with your take, but I think the tone and angle of phrases could be more balanced.

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Ideally, there would be no reason to start yet another thread, but we now have another wave of this discussion permeating other threads and diluting the utility of the forum. So this is an attempt to gather the interested parties here, and keep other threads on topic.

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It’s a community forum, are you getting some answers from googol/apple/M$ developers on their forums? How big is your FLOSS project, would you be able to answer the amount of posts this forum gets (or hire moderators?). It is what it is, don’t treat ppl volunteering their time as a paid support service (inb4 now couch CEO more about those millions of euros jolla is swimming in I’m sure)
The best answers you’ll get is from other users who possibly already tinkered around your problem, if you spam new topics without even bothering to search expect ridicule and unhelpful answers, it’s that simple

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don’t treat ppl volunteering their time as a paid support service

I’m not treating anyone as anything. Read my comment again. I’m saying that Jolla can afford hiring. No one need to spend their own time on something (i.e., triaging) that Jolla can easily hire someone for.

(inb4 now couch CEO more about those millions of euros jolla is swimming in I’m sure)

In the live video the CEO said theiy have sold 50’000 units or J2. If each unit retails at roughly 500€, then do the math. This is besides the money they earn from other products, and from the Sailfish car manufacturer deals. So yes, I’mpretty sure they can afford to hire a part-time triage.

How big is your FLOSS project, would you be able to answer the amount of posts this forum gets

This is off-topic to this thread, but since you asked, do you have statistics about number of new tgreads in this forum? Is it larger than number of posts in Fediverse instances like Fosstodon.org? Because they are moderated by a team without calling people “moron”.

About my FLOSS projects, I don’t want to gloat, but since you asked: One of my projects has 30k stars on GitHub with 13’532 monthly downloads just from Flathub (ignoring all the installs from distros, Windows ans macOS installs, Snap, AppImage, and direct download and install). This is just one, but the largest. At least two others have over 1.5k download per month (one of which with total of 555k downloads). For most projects I don’t even have numbers as some are in repos that don’t provide numbers.

How many new users Sailfish has per month prior to this J2 release? I’m asking because I searched online and didn’t find any sold statistics what so ever. There is a thread from back in 2017 that stated estimated 5k users, but that is 10 years ago and that was a user’s estimate.

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Perfect, now we are labeling users and calling them names. So mature and so kind of you.

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Okay, he miss heard the number from video. You don’t need to be unconstructive/unpolite because of it. It is okay to be not participating to conversation. He also might not know financials of Jolla before, this is going to be second year ever when Jolla makes profit (if I’m not mistaken).

Edit. IMO Jolla has a lot more things that need capital before forum moderators. But this is just personal preference and everyone can have their own opinion on the matter. Jolla will decide how they allocate the money themselves anyway

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Yes you are right, it is 15k (go to time 02:29:56)

Here is the adjusted meth: 15’000 * 500 = 7.5 million. Assuming 30% profit margin, would be 2.25 million euros. In the first 6 months of 2026

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So a newbie comes here and posts that what everybody hates and receives a lot of hate from certain older forum members.

The next newbie does exactly the same and nobody benefits from all the hate the first newbie got because the second newbie arrived when the flame feast was over and this thread had already been buried deep.

For everybody who arrives to this forum there should be a banner glued to the monitor that that would say in a huge font “At least read this before posting”. Behind that link there would be five points to consider before posting.

There shouldn’t be more than five points because when somebody is excited about writing his article he is incapable of reading long instructions and philosophy.

In the five points you can of course have links to other pages if somebody wants to learn more.

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And yet the clueless want to run the company (again and again), they have so many millions

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Just let them fantasize. Like it would matter what random person in forum fantasizes

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And just so this money conversation can go to right direction. First 10k units were pre-orders. They for sure had smaller margin considering currently phone costs 750e in configuration I paid 500e. Of course we need to note also the memory price increase.

But I hope currently the profit is around 30% or more :slight_smile: Jolla needs every €

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Yes, I expect the discussion to continue here, rather than in threads on other topics.

That’s an interesting take.

The first part is me asking everybody to please consider what it is like for the people providing most of the answers here. The second part is me giving a few actual examples of what regulars have faced - also, these are not really unique to the Sailfish OS Forum, but patterns I see on other forums as well. Intention: conveying what it is like, in concrete terms.

I don’t think every newcomer acts like that, nor do I think that would be a reasonable interpretation of my writing. No newcomer is the target here, unless of course they engage in the described behaviours.

I agree, and every member here was once a newcomer. What I’m saying is that the Forum Rules are very sensible, and that newcomers should follow them. Including “read before you post” and “stay on topic”.

The members here are a pretty diverse group, considering our niche, and I think some are in fact maintainers of other projects. I would assume that anyone with that background has already seen the same challenges we have here, with some oldtimers and newcomers alike, who don’t follow Forum Rules. And I’m sure these maintainers instinctively follow very similar rules.

You are just as welcome here as the non-techy indivividual, who started to look for an alternative to Android yesterday.

Of course the Forum Rules applies to every member, I didn’t think I needed to emphasize that. The context here…

…should make it clear what I mean. I.e. some regulars being unnecessarily stern towards newcomers, which I take it was your point too.

No, I don’t agree.

I stand by my statement that the Forum Rules apply to every member. But, as you wrote, in some cases regulars could be more welcoming. We need to tackle this concrete situation, not the abstract idea outlined in the rules. We also need to tackle concrete issues with people violating other sections of the Forum Rules, like reading before posting, because that is a force driving some regulars into bad territory.

Since you are in the group of maintainers you mentioned above, I would think you understand this and have sometimes struggled to keep the forums enjoyable. Any experience, that you may have, with concrete actions to achieve this is appreciated.

This is the Community Forum for Sailfish OS, as clearly stated in the first sentence of the Forum Rules. If you want to weigh in on how Jolla spends their earnings, please consider joining their board. Forum members can’t really help with that.

Verdict: Mostly false, and I will assume that you are aware of that.

This is already in the Forum Rules, as noted in the post you replied to. It is in fact part of the rules for every forum I’m a member of, and for good reason.

You are of course entitled to your opinion and you are free to start a forum dedicated to duplicated posts, in case you find that the right approach :wink: .

Meanwhile, the current rules of this forum apply, and people breaking them need encouraged to do better. Those rules aren’t set in stone, though, so if you want to see a change, please start a topic to collect support for the idea. (I have to say I’m a little surprised with your approach, given your stated background as a FLOSS maintainer.)

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Maybe we can help these “couch CEO” (I like that expression :sweat_smile:)

Let’s assume the 30% margin on 750 € device, that would be 225 €.
This means that for the first batch at 500 €, the margin is somewhere above 25 € (assuming they manage to secure at least 2000 chips—of the 2700 in the first batch—before another price hike).
Then we need to proceed similarly for other batch, still without real costs because this is not public (and has no reason to be although one could guesstimate the bare cost from the teardown—RAM/ROM price aside).
We also need to take into account the people already working at Jolla making the hardware and the software (guess what, software does have a non-null cost, even when it is based on open source components).

Now that I’ve barely scratched the surface, I’ll stop because I’m starting to think I’m no CEO material (just kidding, I always knew I wasn’t).

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@jojomen thank you for your comments and for keeping the discussions civil.

Verdict: Mostly false, and I will assume that you are aware of that.

Well, SailfishOS is neither OpenSource nor free software. if it is, please post the link to the full source code and to the license. I truely wish it was OpenSource, and I’m aware that Jolla has recently OpenSourced some parts, but to the best of my knowledge, it is far from OpenSource. For the reference, the following is the definition of OpenSource:

Any experience, that you may have, with concrete actions to achieve this is appreciated.

Nah, I’m good. Considering the discussions and how newcomers are treated in this forum (multiple threads including here), I strongly believe my feedback/opinion is not welcome. Perhaps I might change my stands when I see more mature folks like you in the forum. But for now, not my kinda crowd.

Thank you all for the fruitful discussion and at the same time for the insults. This will be my last post in this thread, and perhaps in the entire forum for the foreseeable future.

Cheers.

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Being a batch 3 purchaser and having regarded the forum every day for the past 5 months, I feel I need to say something here.

I too was slapped down for my enthusiastic plans and desires to see Jolla succeed. I now refrain from posting as, until I am using my new 2026 phone I have nothing to add to the conversation.

In observing the forum, I do wonder if the general rudeness to innocent newcomers is partly due to the high IQ of forum members along with the possibility that some maybe somewhere along the autistic scale? Hence the unsociable, short tempered replies.

As I have stated elsewhere I, like many others, see the need to turn Jolla into a successful company, not a club. I hope the financial influx from recent product sales and contracts brings sufficient funding to provide a solid OS, better (faster) customer service and indeed more products. Also, after the day 1 presentations, I am aware that we have very little insight into the company activities, which have obviously been extensive.

As sailfish OS believers we put up with the status quo, as a new customer the experience stinks, particularly if you haven’t got hours to trawl through this disorganised forum. Tags instead of sub categories etc, limited logical drill down for a particular search, even search can be frustrating to locate information you are looking for, I usual bump into the information I need by chance, not a focused search.

If You’ve been on the forum for years it may be easily familiar, as a new customer it’s hard work and needs to change…. but that is just my opinion based on five months of observation, 10yrs as an operations manager, 15 yrs as a project manager, 10 years as a business owner, 5yrs as a corporate sales account manager and overall 40yrs as a computer enthusiast.

Quote: Keep doing what you’ve always done and you keep getting what you always got!

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