[Fascinate General] ChromWolf:
I think it's time I could actually pipe in and not sound like a complete douche, because it's time you were given some perspective sir. I'm not saying I'm any kind of authoritative Fascinate expert; that's a grossly absurd assessment. I'll do my best to leave out any sarcasm so you can actually see why people react to your threads and posts the way they do. See below for bolded sections I'll reference. Also: Warning, Wall of Text hits you for over 9000 damages.

...and...

Firstly, there *are* in fact some contradictory messages from these two posts. For starters, that ruins your cred as a developer. You say there are "2 toptier active working aosp developers", but then say you're not one of them. The implication in the first post was pretty clear to us---if, in fact, you didn't really mean it, I'd say it's very much in order to be MUCH more mindful of how you word your posts---it really does matter. Mentioning *meeting a goal* of getting Quadrant scores of 5000 and then turning around and saying "Quadrant scores are stupid" just makes you look like you're changing your tune to fit in with the flow--and worse, that you're basically saying your goal was a "stupid" one, or not really any kind of accomplishment. You're actually damaging your own reputation with this kind of actively contradictory statement, in my opinion.

Moving on, let's look at the "Tall Order" portions.

"I'm just making the fascinate rom community huge."

"just trying to double it"

"4-5 different kernels"

"50-80 different roms"

"Be happy I'm doing **** for the fascinate."

"Both working hard to make this phone better."

"I do work hard for the fascinate. Trying to port everything I can."

"I'm doing alot for it right now."

With soooo many of them, I can't help but possibly view these as anything other than statements to puff up your reputation. The trouble is, most of the community seems to see through them. The words you're using border on the absurd; sometimes they even cross that border. "Huge" Fascinate community? This phone is actively dying off, as others have said. The LTE phones grab them up, the missed calls thing nitsuj mentioned, and with the Galaxy Nexus coming out, I'm sure we'll see a pretty huge drop in Fascinate members. "I'm making it huge" kind of sounds ridiculous--I'm just calling it like I see it, but it sounds like, sarcasm aside, most posters agree.

4-5 "different" kernels? I'm kind of an XDA lurker these days, the long-time XDA members could generally explain why, referring to the decline of the community overall. But from what I've seen, there are only about 3 or 4 people who have EVER developed a kernel for the Fascinate (or Mesmerize), and I'm including TW kernels here. You're saying you can more-than-double it? ...Will you be writing a kernel from scratch? In my experience, anyone who gets accused of kernel kanging has pretty much grabbed some of the from-scratch work JT has worked so hard to accomplish, tweaking it, and calling it their own. In truth, those 3 or 4 kernel developers I'm estimating? They pretty much all credit their kernel source as work JT did and they modified. That means the number of people offering us unique, functioning, and most importantly, delivered kernels really dwindles down to one: JT.

I'm not even going to touch on the "50-80 ROMs" claim. That is solidly in the realm of the absurd. Perhaps I need to re-examine the old threads on these forums, but I think I'd be hard-pressed to find a single Fascinate developer who could claim even 5-8 distinct, separate, individual ROMs, let alone 50-80. Mostly it's updates to ROMs, forks, or Mod includes. This means this claim also seems to fall so far inside the border of "I'm bragging to increase my reputation" we can't actually see where it fell. :P

The second half of the bullet list kinda gets into more of these overstatings of importance, especially in light of the apparently rather widely perceived lack of delivery. Claims with no progress or download links will, I'd say quite reasonably, ruin your reputation. No one, generally speaking, likes a braggart. We want results.

Let's discuss that. At most, I've seen claims and maybe one ROM release. I'm not actively watching the Fascinate forums as I'm a mesmerize user, but for the most part the work done for the Fascinate trickles down to the Mesmerize eventually, kernels especially; but if that means I've missed a ROM release or two, I'm willing to accept that claim. That said, I'm fairly confident I have not; otherwise, you wouldn't be facing such harsh reprisal posts. Overall actually delivery: 1 (maybe 2) ROMs, no kernels. Also: Porting doesn't really count.

ROMs really only count if they boot. "Galaxy sense gets to the boot animation. Then just loops. So I'm getting somewhere with it." Here's the thing, and I can actually say this with experience: No, you're not. Some background to say why I can say that so authoritatively...

Dfgas very graciously thanks me (first even!) for getting the Gingerbread MIUI port for the Mesmerize (and it was my hope at the time, for the Fascinate as well). What had I really accomplished? I'd tried porting from a few different sources as far as which phone I'd port to based on the soft buttons and hardware of those devices, as well as what people had previously used, played with the build.prop, tried replacing the RIL files and anything pointing to them via SMALI editing, and a few other minor such tweaks. Apart from ONCE, where I got it to boot into the ROM (still in chinese at that point, and no apps worked, I could pretty much just lock and unlock it, and slide to the various home screens), all it would ever do is bootloop at the logo. It took an entirely different approach from people VASTLY (almost grossly) more experienced than me to tackle it; namely, JT, Andmer, and Dfgas. JT formed the FascinateMTD framework for CM7, and Andmer started building the first Fascinate MIUI ports. Dfgas took that work and streamlined the porting process from Fascinate to Mesmerize, and eventually took over the entire porting process for the Fascinate as well.

Bottom line: What did I actually do as far as getting MIUI ported to the Mesmerize and/or Fascinate? The brutally honest answer: Nothing. It *did* achieve the one goal I was after though: it got the ball rolling, and I now have GB MIUI on my phone. Did I port it? Nope. I got listed in the credits because Dfgas is awesome like that. Am I a dev? HA! NO. I'm a dabbler at best, and I asked for SOOOO much help to even accomplish what I did manage to. I tried porting from the Fascinate port to the mesmerize too, but even then, I couldn't do it as quickly and as well as others were, so I let them do it better and I thanked them as I enjoyed the fruits of their labor.

Bottom line: I realize who I am and where I stand, and what I've contributed to this community. Namely, precious little. I wrote the Mesmerize Glossary, sure. I know it's been helpful, sure, but it ain't no ROM. So here's the thing: realize that when you make a claim and have so little to show for it (i.e. a boot looping ROM), no one is going to take you seriously when you say "I'm making progress".

In closing, it seems clear to me that this is all about posturing and claims being made, vs. what's really being released and produced, as well as noting who's really done most of the work. It seems there are unspoken "rules" (sometimes, these actually *are* listed rules) that people aren't aware of, or conveniently ignore in favor of spreading their aspirations of dev work to the community. Let's actively go over them, for everyone's sake.

Don't port someone else's work without listing out EXACTLY what they did, and what you didn't. Be extremely explicit about what work you did, but more importantly, be even MORE extremely explicit about who did the stuff you didn't. Crediting your source work properly is the key to earning devcred if you're not doing entirely original work.

Corollary: Though it sometimes happens otherwise, actually ask to use someone else's work before you even begin porting it.

ROM postings with very little changed (i.e. build.prop, some apps, launcher, themes, etc.) is not a "new" ROM. Don't market it as such, the devs who did the hard work to actually produce the source ROMs don't like it, and will let you know it.

Don't make a claim of something you're *going* to deliver. Point out things you have already accomplished and posted (though see above points). Let your work speak for your talent, not your promises.

Claims of things you have not yet produced, especially when they are tall orders (let alone ludicrous), does NOT increase your devcred. It actually makes you look silly.

NEVER promise something. "I'm hoping to...", "the goal is...", or "hopefully..." are ways you should explain things you'd like the include. The big devs do it because, quite frankly, they have the ENORMOUS devcred required to be able to get away with it, and people trust, after all the hard work they have already delivered, that they will accomplish it. ((A hint to Enyo: You are not such a dev.))

I'm sure there are far more points than this we could explicitly list, but my post drags on.

The TL;DR version: Enyo, realize why people are reacting to you the way they are. They see so little contribution in relation to your claims and promises. Don't bother to make a claim until you actually have something to post. It's far more classy that way, and people will react so much better. Always give credit for things you didn't make, but include (for EVERYTHING---kernels, ROM sources you're porting, EVERYTHING) exact specifics of what you changed, otherwise listing it as their work. It lends you so much devcred to actually acknowledge and thank a fellow developer. I would even go so far as to say many users judge the work of a developer by how much they bothered to show exactly what they *didn't* do but someone else did. Don't worry that it sounds like you didn't do as much--let the quality of your work speak for itself.

I think you *could* be a great developer, and a fair number of posters are happy to see you working for the Fascinate. Just don't overstate what you're doing---use that time to do the devwork instead. Know how to approach your usercrowd, which inevitably includes your fellow (or even source) devs.