[Galaxy S 4 General] a.cid:
With the general feeling of disappointment (and even hate) around, I thought I'll take this moment out to thoroughly explain what has been done, and why it has been done.

Have a look at the list below:

Singapore Galaxy S4

Australian Galaxy S4 owners thread

Pakistani Galaxy S4 Owners Thread

Brazilian Galaxy S4 Thread

Galaxy S4 Philippines

Bangladesh Galaxy S4

Indian Galaxy S4 Owners Thread

[malaysian i9500/i9505 thread]

Ireland/UK Galaxy S4 Thread

Lebanese Galaxy S4 Thread

Sweden S4 Thread

Now ask yourself these questions:

Do you actually need these many country threads?

There are 190+ countries in the world, and with a global launch for the S4, does each and every country require it's own thread? If you answer "No", then you are biased in thinking that country A needs a thread whereas country B doesn't.

And what's to say that a single thread is sufficient per country? For example, my own state is larger in area and population than many European nations. So why shouldn't I have my own state thread? The state itself is too big, and a city based thread would be more localized. Maybe I, as a user, should create one. Or maybe a locality based one would solve all my woes.

The question here is, at what point do we draw the line? This is no easy question to answer, because try as much as we may, no one solution will please all.

Yes, we understand that when the phone launches (even during pre-launch), there is general excitement and frenzy all over. And at these times, such threads become helpful. They allow people to gather information at the time when there is no clear answer with everybody. The device is relatively new, and people are ignorant of what the best deal may be.

Fast forward to two months after launch. Do you still require region specific threads? Wouldn't it be easier if you just paid a visit to your local market or your online store to find out the current market prices, check the online review stores for the best set of accessories, contact your provider's Customer Service to find out their LTE rollout plans, etc?

XDA is not the answer to everything. Yes, a lot of people rely on researching the forum to see if there are hardware/software issues before they buy a new device. But to say that the sole purpose they joined was to find the best contract they can avail from Three, then I must say, they joined for the wrong reasons.

We aren't a consumer oriented website. We are a developer's website, but we do allow plenty of leeway to non-developers. We realize that everybody starts small, and we really appreciate the people who actually take the efforts to start. But certain things are better considered as "privileges" and not "rights".

"They shouldn't have closed down the threads. They weren't useless."

- I honestly doubt if any moderator has called any of those threads as useless. Even in my closing posts, I have acknowledged the fact that the team considers these threads as useful. It's just that, they have served their time well, and all of them have started pointing towards the more generic topics of discussion, and hence, needed to be retired from duty. [Example: In a bunch of threads, the conversation topic was the latest firmware that dropped in another country thousands of kilometres away.] Essentially, people were talking the same things, but in different groups.

"You call yourself a community. Yet you do not allow communities to exist"

- We at XDA, are a community in ourselves. When people further attempt to create communities in the open fora, they are in fact dividing the existing one. We do not need this type of segregation,

when there no longer exists need of one.

How many Malaysian users frequented the Indian thread, or how many Brazilian users helped around in the Philippines thread? (Just examples used to drive the point across). People can still roam around, but do they?

"These threads helped newbie's to start with their device. The people are really helpful, and answer any questions asked."

- Yes, again, Fact Acknowledged and a virtual pat on the back for everyone who helped :good:

But isn't that the purpose with which the "[HELP THREAD] Galaxy S4 | Ask any question | Noob friendly." thread (and the Q&A section at large) was made? Imagine, if people from one community are so helpful, if everyone chimed in and helped people around, you'd actually be increasing your scope from inter-region to international.

You see a question asked, and you have the knowledge and will, you answer it, irrespective of the user being from your country or not, asking in your thread or not. If you see someone genuinely taking efforts to help someone else out, you hit the "thanks" button for them and give them a pinch of motivation :)

TL;DR, things don't need to be restricted to your subscribed threads. There's a largely unexplored forum out there, waiting for you.

As a matter of fact, the early bunch of pm's I received after the closures were made, were people who thought/assumed that only their own thread was closed. They failed to notice at that moment that a bunch of them were closed at the same time.

People who frequently roam around the General subfora would even acknowledge the fact that the threads had started to clog. The regional threads notice a high turnover and this results in all of them sitting at page one. This barely leaves room for other threads to be noticed.

The S4 had ~13 regional threads, and as per the forecasted trend, the Note 3 would have touched 20 regional threads by this time in its product cycle. The threads are made under the general moniker of "Availabilty and Deals", but a lot of them end up being "me-too" type threads. Country A has it, so country B should do too.

Question again, where do we draw the line?

It is also disappointing to hear the tone in some of the pm's. Much more disappointing is the fact that people call us "fascist" and compare us moderators with controversial historical figures, while all we are doing is trying to manage a forum while having a broader line of sight. Have we really wronged you so much by closing a thread, so as to be deserving of such hate?

No, we do not ban people just because they questioned a moderator's action. We simply request you to be polite and do it via pm, not as public posts. We are tolerant and will accept constructive criticism as feedback.

We haven't taken any action against misue of "official" in thread titles, while we could have very well infracted the erring OP's on misrepresentation and action without authorization. We can and we should have, but have we done so? No, we haven't. And this by itself is a testimony to the fact that we are tolerant to a really large extent.

Then you have posts like "Moderators are stupid, they don't know how to manage", which are no better than the newbie's post in a dev thread which says "My wifi broke. Fix it" without any additional details. Where is the constructive criticism in this? At the very least, work with us to solve the issues. Simply escalating problems isn't good for the community and might even worsen the situation.

Again, we are emphasizing the fact that these threads were useful. But the decision to close down a large number of these was one of the toughest ones that we have ever taken. As mentioned previously, it has been discussed to death. All possibilities, angles, point-of-views, were taken in mind before we came to a conclusion. Decisions aren't just abruptly taken.

In fact, the right decision isn't always the most popular one, as we have experienced here firsthand. We aren't looking around for threads to close in other devices as of yet. But if the need arises, and decision is to be made, then decision shall be made (on case by case basis).

In future devices, these threads aren't "banned" per se. Users are still free to create one when the device is just born/young. But do bear in mind that sometime in the future, they may get closed.

As for the Galaxy S4, this is the end of regional threads (except the ones exempted on hardware differences). Any more threads/retakes will not be allowed in the subfora. Please respect this decision.

"What do we do know?"

- As my teammates have mentioned (and as has been discussed via pm with some of you), the Social Groups feature of XDA is vastly left unutilized. You are free to create your own country, city, toy club groups. And as long as things remain within the forum rules there, they shall be allowed. Talk OT, availability, accessories, whatever you wish. Just abide by the forum rules, and report in case of problems :) That is all we ask :good:

If you pm me the link of the XDA social group that you have created for your country thread (provided one doesn't exist already), I'll edit the closing post and direct users towards them :good:

"Will you place links to our groups made on popular social networking sites?"

- I'm afraid we can't do that. We restrict ourselves to things concerning XDA.

We hope this clears up a lot of questions that people had in mind.

Thank you for your patience and co-operation :)

Moderator Team

Samsung International