Thank you for your reply! I really appreciate that Jolla cares about the community (in the end, they set up the forums). After being a big Blackberry 10 user until the purchase of a Sony Xperia 10 II at the end of 2020, it really sucks when a company completely ignores the community (although Crackberry forums was never meant to be an official place, it would have been nice to get more feedback from RIM).
I guess that after reading @orangecat’s post the other day (SailfishOS in universities: feedback on experiences) about how unnecessarily complex it was for uni students to actually develop and test for Sailfish OS (and being a uni student myself, I agreed quite a lot with what their impressions were), and not seeing any feedback from Jolla (or not that I’m aware of anyway), I finally thought that it was worth bringing this up. I really want this project to succeed not only in the business area with Russian companies, but rather as a good, solid and open alternative to iOS and Android, something that Canonical, Mozilla and Blackberry (minus the open part) have all deemed impossible or impractical. With how good the OS is already (I haven’t been able to use it on a daily driver, but I have extensively tested it on other people’s devices), it’d be great to have more documentation, maybe a bit more presence on the community from Jolla with what @Steve_Everett mentioned about the badges (don’t want to waste any of the engineers’ time, so maybe a more official group of volunteers could be set up to handle this? support on this forum is already amazing by regular users), and more content online (helping to get SFOS on content creators’ hands? something that would help spread the word more) would be quite nice to make more people aware of this great project.
I really didn’t want to sound accusatory. Although I could have worded the post a bit better (maybe it sounded more like a rant than an attempt at a constructive conversation), I didn’t want to criticise and accuse, I just wanted to point out a feeling that maybe others were having and were not expressing. Hope that Jolla didn’t take it the wrong way.
It wasn’t directed at you. Your initial post is fair, measured, and constructive.
But there are plenty of threads around where people are overly negative, and blame Jolla for things that are out of their control, or obviously too expensive. I’ll refrain from pointing them out at this time.
Often they deteriorate into “GAAH, Jolla needs to fix all the issues”, promptly followed by failing to actually specify what issues, or indeed why Jolla can reasonably do anything about them.
@Steve_Everett
You have maybe blipped on my negativity-radar once or twice, but you do try to be constructive. I’m judging possible reactions from sailors by my own experiences here, as a developer also from the Nordics. So it is definitely bound to be a bit off, but also closer than many. I don’t think directness is really an issue, but when that turns confrontational instead of constructive, it could definitely become one.
Easy solution - turn your negativity radar off and save battery power! Then you won’t have to second-guess what our motives are for posting the posts we post I can’t imagine that anyone (me included) is on this forum for any other purpose than they like Sailfish and want it to succeed
It was just a matter of speech, and i really did mean it was minor.
I have no wish to search them out, trust me. But there have in fact been times where people plain have refused to be constructive or even fair. And that gets in the way of the rest of us.
Based on my experiences over the past 7+ years, I must say I’ve seen Jolla employees reply to loads of questions and help out with all sorts of problems. Whether their Jolla hat is on or off, they’re Sailfish enthusiasts just like us community members, who want Sailfish to succeed and people to succeed with Sailfish - you don’t work for a small company if you don’t in some way believe in that company. I’m 100% sure that if you’d ask Jolla for help with a problem you’re experiencing on the now-retired Jolla 1, someone would still give it a look - within reason, of course.
But that also tells us something useful - that, for whatever reason, their experience has not been good - they’re frustrated, angry, unfair or not constructive. So why? Key to fixing any user or customer’s perception of a product is to understand why they hold that perception. When the reason is understood, the underlying cause can be fixed - the product improved, their perception corrected or whatever. Normally happy users or customers rarely complain or comment, unhappy users or customers do - and this can be destructive as you say. I’m all for understanding them and fixing their problem.
I do somewhat agree with this in that there is a certain distance between the company and the community. While there are company people around, in terms of communication, strategy, plans and even ultimate vision for Sailfish, the company is less than transparent. Being more transparent would create a warmer feel in the community.
However, when you’re a small company struggling for survival, it is very easy to become a little unfocused on the community. Especially if that community becomes a forum for complaints and whining (which is not uncommon — we are on the Internet after all). Your attention stretches only to the immediate things that can keep you afloat. Been there done that.
To really be able to make the community a multiplier you need two things:
A strong USP (as mentioned in another thread). Something the OS does uniquely different or uniquely well that the users rave about, and which the company raves about (think early days of Tesla or iPhone). That way the other quirks are forgiven.
Strong leadership that can convey energy, a vision, and create a following.
That’s what I wanted to express, but you put it 1000 times better than I could!
And regarding your last point, I agree. It’s not very easy to see who’s behind Jolla now. If you go to their YouTube page, the last video is from two or three years ago. It’s hard to create that following if you don’t know who exactly to follow. Some might argue that the product will speak for itself, but sadly in the real world good marketing helps quite a lot. As you say, they are not very transparent about their vision or their long-term plans, which is not great when it’s such a small community (small compared to Android, haha)
How? By just pointing out the truth?
This should not be the case and must not happen at all in an open forum, imo!
And I am sure it does also not help to keep silent about the well-known shortcomings…
I have followed the last days a lot of @Steve_Everett 's posts and do see them all as valid and with well formed wording. And no negativity.
Nevertheless I agree there have been lots of whining and demanding as well a lot of times.
For whatever reasons? I am not going to join that discussion…
As a side note:
I started to use SFOS as daily driver only around summer/fall 2018 (before using N9/x0 and Jolla1/C only as hobby) with XA2 with updated Android support.
Just to find end of 2019 that some unacceptable bug(s) hindered me to update to 3.3, then again to 3.4 and now again with 4.0. So my daily driver is still on 3.2.
And those bugs were partly resolved only, and new (imho some unacceptable) introduced. Again I do not want to start/join that discussion…
I see i was too vague even in the clarification. I took it as a bit of an implicit question of whether @Steve_Everett was complicit, and all i meat to say was “not really, but we can all improve”.
But it also doesn’t help to repeat them time and time again without adding anything to the conversation.
(Not saying anyone here did that, talking about the generic case)
Good, then we agree.
I’d like to talk to you about the narrative that recent releases are somehow effective unusable… because i don’t see basically any other people saying that, and i certainly don’t experience it. And actually this serves a a bit of an example - not citing any sources for that claim. After all, a bit more attention on said issues can’t hurt? But i’ll not press, let me know when you are ready if you want to talk (probably not in this thread).
I am hoping you’ve got your words wrong here, but just to be clear, it is not up to you or anybody else to sit in judgement of me and whether my posts are complicit, to your personal satisfaction, or whatever. You may disagree with my point of view - that’s your prerogative and I fully respect that, but this is an open forum and all points of view should be encouraged and welcomed - and if they repeat a view or a shortcoming that has been stated before, perhaps many times, then perhaps more weight should be attached to fixing it. Enough said.
I did not keep track of all those issues (maybe I should have ).
But just to state two or three (in my eyes unacceptable issues for a daily driver for at least 3 months!) please see below.
I agree not all of them are blockers to use but absolutely hindering/derailing daily experience!
Some may be system-file-edited away.
Some may not affect all but a good portion of people (would I risk to be one of them?).
And I did/do not want to derail the good intention of this thread so please open up another one (which I was just to lazy and mayne disappointed) to do so) in case you feel to the need to discuss below issues (and more if you need to be pointed at):
(yes, I know, last one is evil. but hey it is pandemic)
oh, and this
and maybe such
or maybe this here (adding one-by-one as stumbling upon them on daily basis without looking for them…)
Well David, you are the Jolla an employee, why don’t you bring that topic up Jolla-internally?
As it became obvious, it is quite relevant for FSO users to be able to distinguish Jolla employees from community people, in order to prevent perceptions as “Jolla employees are lurking in this forum and disguising themselves as community members”.
IMO these negative perceptions are a logical consequence of Jolla employees not being detectable as such, here at FSO (in contrast to TJC).
Side note: “It’s quite possible. Stay sharp ” is not an appropriate reaction to somebody pointing out this issue, from my (community) POV.
I understood Steve’s use of “lurking” to be lighthearted rather than negative, and my response was intended as lighthearted as well. If I offended you, Steve or anyone else with my comment, then I apologise. In particular, I should make clear that I don’t believe there’s any actual lurking going on from Jolla employees.
I have brought up the issue internally though. Let’s see what happens.
I think the point here, for me at least, is that I had a perception that Jolla didn’t really have any presence on this community - which is as much for their benefit as it is for ours, probably more. My own view is that this is essential if Jolla want good community relations, and to keep the community motivated and excited, and finally so that people don’t get fed up with the lack of engagement and leave. I held that perception because I had never seen any Jolla involvement in the discussions. On the latter point it turns out I was wrong - Jolla folk are involved, its just not obvious they are Jolla people and not normal community users if you don’t know who they are. Hence my comment. However … I don’t for one minute believe that Jolla folk are deliberately disguising their presence on the forum - their ‘disguise’ is borne out of the fact that they are not identified as Jolla employees and, to those that don’t know them, look like any other forum member who lurks on here for in silence for the majority of time but contributes when he or she comes across a topic they want to make a point about. Your point about David (flypig’s real name I assume) being able to promote this issue internally is well made - especially as they had Jolla ‘badges’ on the old TJC forum and decided, for whatever reason, not to carry some method of identifying Jolla employees forward to the new forum. On David’s response to me, I think this is fine - he has correctly gauged my sense of humour and responded in kind.
Actually a few well-known several sailors/employees, are already present, occasionally engaging in discussions. Level of visibility or their participation varies according to each of their individual specialty/field, relevant to the topics being discussed at a certain time… Naturally, and reasonably so… they keep some distance from general discussions, and engage in ‘more’ serious/critical matters, especially ‘urging bugs’ and developers’ technical obstacles.
I agree!
It is a huge effort - in my personal words I would say an impracticably monster project - to write a usermanual for SFOS, that covers anything and any problem that may occur.
I see this in a way - Sailfish lives in the community and from the community. And here in the Sailfish community we solve problems by communicating with each other. For me, the user manual of Sailfish OS is this forum. And I like this!
One thing that I think could improve cohesion is more transparency and feedback on the bugs raised via this forum. I know I go on about it at every available opportunity but how is it that something like [3.4.0.22] XA2 phone calls no audio can be generating so many complaints from paid up sailors and not getting tracked as a known issue in release notes? (even worse, it was tracked previously and marked as fixed) I think there should be some clearer visibility of which bugs Jolla is going to work on especially for things which render supported devices useless/extremely disruptive. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on this @flypig.
I can’t imagine that anyone (me included) is on this forum for any other purpose than they like Sailfish and want it to succeed 
).
” is not an appropriate reaction to somebody pointing out this issue, from my (community) POV.