yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[About XDA developers] BrooklynAvi:
I'm assuming the latest requests for non-HTC devices comes from Moto Droid users. Hey, why not? The more the merrier. Personally, I love HTC devices, but I think if XDA can allow others to benefit from this awesome site (easily my second most used site after Google) then go for it.

Two things would be amazing. One, the ridiculously long main forum page can be annoying, especially after I wipe my phone and need to visit XDA for the first time (I have to go to Google first to avoid that page loading on my phone). Secondly, since XDA is a site dedicated to mobile devices, wouldn't it be nice if it played nicely with the small screen size. This isn't such a big deal since the introduction of WebKit browsers but there are still plenty who do not have them (probably a good majority of this forum considering it is primarily a WinMo forum). A good mobile site would be awesome.

Someone mentioned the yellow. Yeah, I agree. It's a little old and dull. I like white and light blue. Just my two cents.
[About XDA developers] svetius:
As mentioned, we're indeed trying to figure out a way to better organize the forum index. Currently, it's a massively long list that is entirely too difficult to navigate.

Second....about the yellow. The original intent of the yellow (and this is from many years ago) was to be easy on the eyes. Black-on-white can cause eye strain for some, and the yellow was thought of as a better alternative.

What we're likely to do, and this too is in the works, is offer users the ability to switch color themes. That way, you can choose to stay with the legacy colors, or go with something different. :)
[About XDA developers] rohorubo:
thanks to god. my SE X2 will hopefully have a nice place here at the forum ;-)
[About XDA developers] quicksite:
Hey svetius, who did the new logo I see on the new twitter feed == it looks great!

. . . . . . . .

Lots of good stuff ahead!

.
[About XDA developers] ChumleyEX:
Android is the future, of this I have no doubt, this site needs to flow with technology. If we take up all Android devices and put forth the amazing creativity that Clan XDA has, this site will become the ultimate power in the universe.
[About XDA developers] Arktronic:
ChumleyEX: before declaring an ultimate champion, you may at least want to wait for the match to begin. WM7 just might change your mind ;)
[About XDA developers] egzthunder1:
Not to keep pushing this one (who am I kidding, I am pushing this :D). I have been volunteering myself to become a mod for the last half year or so. As it is right now, there is an average of 3-4 mods at any given time and an average traffic of about 6500 people on the site at any given time... (and these are conservative averages as there are usually more people and less mods). Just the other day I saw about 8000 people online and only 1 mod!!!!

So, while the idea of adding other devices is tempting (and a good one at that), I will have to say that I agree with l3v5y. If we are going to start including more traffic into the site, we have to be sure and certain that it can be handled accordingly.

@ svetius,

Good having another admin!!!! Congrats on the "promotion" :D
[About XDA developers] crpercodani:
Amen to a Moto Droid sub forum!! I have been forced to use alldroid, and while they may be the best dev community for the droid at this point I feel XDA would offer much more for us users. I bet a lot of G1/MT3G/Hero dev's and users have wanted to switch to the Droid but without XDA support they haven't done so yet. Now that we can hopefully have a forum for it here I bet we will have many more rom's from more experienced devs.
[About XDA developers] shiner88:
I agree with smaury..

+1
[About XDA developers] doministry:
Just my 2 cents....

XDA was so helpful to my first steps in WM,

it was really cruical...

Now I also help with pleasure...

I use SE X1.

I would love to see - logically - X2 subforum...

Would be awesome!

P.S.

I REALLY hope the new design will be AS EASILY accesible from

MOBILE browsers as it is now....

Cheers!
[About XDA developers] denco7:
Here is my 2 cents,

When you start a forum for Porsches the focus is on Porsches. When the site becomes the foremost authority on Porsches and engine modification, people with other sports cars are going to be knocking at the door to get the Porsche engine modifiers to help them modify their sports car engines to get the same reliability and power of a Porsche. When you add an SUV to the mix Porsche Cayenne = Android , people are going to say well this isn't just a Porsche sports car forum, you have SUVs here now the precedent has been set. Well no it hasn't, the forum is about Porsches and the Cayenne is a Porsche.

Obviously the mobile phone world is envious of XDA and everyone with a cell phone wants to jump on the bandwagon. But there are glaring reasons why no other phone forum is as successful . XDA is not successful because it is about HTC phones, HTC is not the number one handset maker by a long shot. XDA is not wildly successful because it is a WM forum, we all know that WM is not the number one OS and it is fading fast, yet XDA is the most successful phone forum out there with 2.06 million members and growing.

It is because of the people, the people make this site, not the owners of the site, not the phones and not the OS . It is the contributors, the smart, inquisitive , creative people that were/are enthusiastic about their HTC phones that made this forum.

Does anyone really think that the non HTC people want to dilute this forum because they are wild about hacking their phones and really wish to share/expand this knowledge with others. Or because they see all that can be taken from XDA and wish to do so for their devices too. Obviously if there were that many people interested in non-HTC phones, they would have started there own wildly successful forum by now. I am sorry, but I see deviating this forum from it's focus of only Porsches/HTC devices will only inundate it with more takers and very few new contributors.

When have you ever seen anything become better by diluting it. When you make a peanut butter sandwich with only one spoonful of peanut butter, which do you do, make one sandwich with a thick layer of peanut butter or make two sandwiches for you and someone else with a tiny thin layer of peanut butter on both. Are twice as many sandwiches as good as one good one ?

Can you say iPhone-developers.com or winmo-developers.com or even android developers.com I would much rather see these...............I'm just sayin though........
[About XDA developers] BobaFeTT_NL:
If we ever hope WinMo to become a competitive platform, compared to Android and iphone, we need to open up to non-HTC phones as well. So, I say it's a good decision.
[About XDA developers] Arktronic:
Very interesting, but I believe you missed a few key points. While HTC is not the #1 handset maker, they are (arguably) the #1 WM handset maker. Until recently, all they made were WM devices. XDA-dev was able to form into the community it is today because it united people who had the same devices from the same manufacturer and the same OS. The reason it's virtually impossible to form such a community for other handsets is that other manufacturers don't specialize in operating systems, or more to the point, "smart" operating systems. Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson, and others all make many different handsets, some of which are smartphones, most of which are dumbphones. HTC has been in a fairly unique position to establish itself as a premier WM device manufacturer. Because of that, a community was able to establish itself based around WinMo simply because that's all HTC had made.

(As an aside, Apple has come into a similar position because of the iPhone, and I'm sure there are extremely popular and useful iPhone development forums out there.)

Today, I would argue that XDA-dev is the best independent WinMo development community out there. I'm not sure where it ranks among Android communities, but I'm sure it's pretty damn high there as well. We have only focused on HTC devices because that's how the forum started out. As you have stated, it's all about the people contributing to these forums. I see no reason why the XDA-dev people here right now would leave if we open up the forums to other devices (as long as we have proper moderation in place!). If anything, we'd get more great people who have focused on other devices to contribute to this community.
[About XDA developers] arunrgupta:
congrats

OMNIA II for sure.. please
[About XDA developers] Shasarak:
If you're going to support non-HTC Android devices, then I can't see any justification at all for not supporting Maemo as well - it's far more closely related to Android than WinMo is.
[About XDA developers] qkzoo:
My 2 cents

Something else to consider is how many non xda/htc users are already members anyhow. A lot of software is developed on this site with no particular handset in mind, just the OS, Androkkid and MortScript are examples. Might as well give them a home, since they come here for support anyhow!
[About XDA developers] ratcom:
you can count me as one of those guys! I will not dare jump on the milestone until I find a good developers fourm!
[About XDA developers] HIYinOR:
Stay True

My first smart phone was a Samsung i760, and it was unsupported and locked up like a bank vault. When I found xda-developers, I decided to get a HTC Vogue/Touch because it was "HTC" => open and supported. I love the i760 but Samsung and other companies do not support development.

Staying true to the mission statement is paramount for a business to continue to succeed. IMHO xda-developers needs to be very cautious here... even though I would have loved (still would love) to have the i760 supported, it is not is not consistent with the "mission statement".
[About XDA developers] Arktronic:
I'm afraid that's simply untrue. HTC themselves have never been "open". They release no APIs and they do not (officially) help XDA-dev. The only reason HTC devices look "open and supported" is because the people of this community are passionate about their devices and have reverse-engineered the very much closed HTC stuff.
[About XDA developers] HIYinOR:
That is probably true, but it appears that HTC at least does not discourage development. The Samsung i760 was very popular in its day and attempts were made to reverse engineer it, but the Samsung's "appear" to be locked in ways or to degrees that HTC's are not.

I do admit this is only my limited view or understanding.
[About XDA developers] NeoS:
I've seen first hand what an open forum discussion can become. Maybe some Polaris users remember the P3D project, where Bally3 and others started with porting the Kaiser 3D drivers to Polaris. Because it was an open discussion with everyone sharing their ideas and tools, the driver was created/ported.

On Blackstone this continued and the result is/was a driverpack with added functionality.

So a developer-only forum would not be my choice. However, more or other categories for some devices would make more sense.

I'm thinking this:

Android based devices

- Android based UI's / themes

- Android applications / games

- hero

- nexus

- etc

Windows based devices

- Windows based UI's / themes

- Windows applications / games

- HD

- HD2

- Kaiser

- etc

And all with their respective subforums. Something like that.

Also, I believe alot of developers are moving away to other sites/forums. Why that is, I have no idea...

EDIT: by the way, i'm shamelessly advertising here for a coordinator for the MSM driver development group. PM me if you have interest and want to help me out with coordinating.
[About XDA developers] egzthunder1:
Funny that you bring up the "Mission Statement"

From the Portal:

"Welcome to XDA-Developers.com

This site is mostly about certain PDA-phones, made by a firm called HTC in Taiwan. They called them 'Wallaby', 'Himalaya', 'Blue Angel', 'Wizard' and 'TyTN', but almost nobody knows them by those names. They are sold through mobile operators that give them their own names. We got our first such phone as 'XDA', hence the name of this site.

Since we developed software for these phones, we needed very specific technical information. When we started xda-developers, neither Microsoft, nor HTC nor the mobile operators seemed eager or even willing to give it to us. So we 'reverse-engineered' the devices, found a lot of information, and shared it with the world. But as our site grew we realised that lots of ordinary users were also suffering from a lack of support. They started using the xda-developers forum to communicate and before long the forum was as much a user forum as it was a developer forum.

Other years, we've grown. Oh my have we grown. In fact we're still growing like crazy: this is now one of the larger systems of its kind on the internet."

Howardforums is a cluttery mess in my opinion simply because they do so much. Keeping it simple will greatly help the forum in general... I think.
[About XDA developers] Princepf:
LG eXpo

please put the lg expo as a new forum it is a great phone. i use to have the kaiser and i want to stay with xda website so please make one for the expo.
[About XDA developers] hav0c:
Good luck in your new role!
[About XDA developers] bydanit:
why not?

As new devices come to scene older ones could be replaced. I think there is plenty room for everyone. Why don´t you extiguish the phones to wich there hasn´t been any rom developement for the last months and let the new ones come in? You just should find a method to identify the most "postable" devices out there. Ex: placing a minimum number of user and possible developers that each device should have in order to become eligible...

Its just a question of good administration and leadership.
[About XDA developers] YOSEFE:
Congratulations, and thank you for being available. Enjoy your new role.
[About XDA developers] egzthunder1:
Let me put things in perspective. A lot of older devices are still being used by an awful lot of people (me included). Point and case, I have a Blue Angel and a Fuze (Raphael) and to be honest I would trade my BA for another Fuze for anything. In fact, I still use it to this very day. Same with my Vogue, and to a certain extent my Wallaby (yes, I have a working Wallaby!!!). There is very scarce info out there about the Blue Angel and nearly no info at all about the Wallaby. Think of XDA as a beacon of light for these people that do not wish to part with their devices. Removing them would be silly... In fact, lets say you are correct in your assumption that not too many users out there are still carrying these devices. That means that the subforums for those devices would have little or no traffic. All in all, it doesn't hurt since not that much moderation would be needed either.

Again, please look at the site's statement
[About XDA developers] dcdivenut:
I do see your point, but if nothing else, from a strictly organizational standpoint, perhaps the older devices can be merged in some way, or at least not each have the same subforum. Wallaby accessories? Kudos to you for having a phone like that still working, but considering that this forum is supposed to support cutting edge phone tech, I think it is safe to say that 5+ year old devices are no longer cutting edge.
[About XDA developers] kathi17:
This is also one of my biggest concerns. Most of us come here frequently on our phones. I have seen other forums which were very easy to use until they decided they needed to use fancy coding. Now some are unusable on my phones, and many of them take forever to load. I would really feel bad if XDA was one of them. Simple is better!
[About XDA developers] anagarika:
Agree ? Not yet

Both Denco7 and Arktronic have valid points.

I can only offer a summarize of all been said + my personal view.

Overall summary:

History

* XDA started as HTC centric due to historic reasons.

* It has grown due to historic reasons, also including Android and other brand (but made by HTC, such as SE - X1)

* The popularity and strength comes from what Denco said, the people

Growing Trends

* More non HTC people comes here to ask for help. Why not to Modaco, or PPCGeeks? Those are general WinMo place, not specific HTC

* Android support beyond XDA are also available

* More newbies coming and diluting the forum, even if they are HTC device users

The basic questions that needs to be asked by decision maker (Owner + Moderators) are:

* Why do you want to expand?

* Is it revenue driven?

* What is the criteria to expand? All WM + All Android? All Linux Base? All OS?

* If it is revenue driven, will you be able to cope and survive? IIRC, Google was heaven for programmers, but when it grows big and ADMIN people who only knows management from books and accounting start managing, see how it turns out (recent tweets on why Google employee quits).

As side note on last point: I was with another company 15 years ago, quit 13 years ago, it was lean and mean, moved fast, changed fast. The last I heard, the bill of newspaper subscription has to be couriered to Hong Kong for approval, of which the cost of delivery is higher than the bill itself? :eek: Result of management by book :(

My main concern now is what is the direction XDA will take. I appreciate the concise info and deep digging required to get result as it is now. Otherwise, it's no longer Developer forum. Making it easy only populates the 'get it easy way' that so pervasive in our era. We need to educate many others that to get these things done, it needs EFFORT. Something many people like to forget and do not appreciate.

What will XDA look and feel with this expansion? Will it change into user friendly support group (too many newbies with repeating questions)? Will it go deeper like iphone-dev (where there's no forum, all the work happens behind the screen, on IRC, etc. and they post the result on the blog)?

As a member, I can only watch how this will grow, and whether I stay or leave, it's my personal choice (I'd rather have it like now, except for the yellow theme ;) Thanks Dave for tips, now it's grey). I think other members also will do the same, so it's up to you guys decide what, how, when, etc.

In any case, this has been one of the best learning experience I have. Even a device as old as Kaiser (bought it new this year just about it gone out of circulation) runs smooth and well on WM 6.5.

So, THANK YOU to everyone ..

(PS: why the Kaiser forum now is Tilt forum? I missed the word Kaiser there, it sounds more regal ;) )
[About XDA developers] egzthunder1:
Not exactly true. I do not believe that the mission of the site is to support just cutting edge like many other WM forums out there. Like I said, it does not hurt to have extra info out there. If you take them out, you will end up losing very valuable knowledge that has come from all the development which brought us to where we are. Point and case, did you know that the BA is one of the first devices to have ported first nearly every major version of WM after 2002? (WM5, WM6, it was the first device to see 6.5 too thanks to a dev called sun_dream)... and the BA is roughly 5 years old. Also, Android was first spotted running on a BA... page pool was discovered by mamaich on the BA too.

If only good for reference, but removing these sub-forums to make space for newer (and in most cases crappier devices, would be silly)

BTW, thanks for the kudos on my beloved Wally :D
[About XDA developers] Arktronic:
Oh, please don't bring up the page pool. Such a sore point. There is way too much misinformation on the forums about it. Mainly that setting it to 0 is a good idea (it's a terrible idea actually). But I digress.

To answer others, keeping older devices here is paramount! We can learn from what the original hackers did to uncover information in those older devices and apply that knowledge to current ones. Getting rid of older device forums would be a travesty, and I highly doubt that any of the admins or mods are even considering it.
[About XDA developers] egzthunder1:
Having been at the page pool "dawn"... 0 (at least for the BA) is not a good idea :D. Molasses are actually faster than the rom with 0 page pool.... why a sore point though? I thought that was the best discovery for our devices since the idea of changing the roms began!!

Paramount is a very appropriate word to use...
[About XDA developers] Latinoz71:
Good luck new entry!
[About XDA developers] JRK-Scope:
If you're afraid the forum would slow down too much with new sections, why not make a sister forum linked through the portal for non-HTC devices? It's an idea though not necessarily a good one.
[About XDA developers] CommanderThor:
A new Idea

Listen i have an totally different idea.

Xda developers is basicly only forum, nothing else is used much. What abaut making this a forum/webpage hybrid? Basicly what i mean is some kind of advanced home screen. With ONE SEPERATE PAGE PER PHONE and that page would act as kind of a indexer for everything.

Things that page could have:

---First of, most visible, links to the already existing subforums for that device

-ROM's/RADIO's (with direct download link/links + forum theme link), sticky theme inside forum of course, where all cookers would post all links, so that moderator of page only needs to see this one small theme.

-most needed tutorials (so they(beginners) don't eat bandwidth browsing/searching forums that much)

-few most interesting topics/news about this phone

Basicly, all that is now in sticky, to have place on one page, edited by the moderator of that device forum. Wouldn't that kind of thing be better browsable? Forums afaik are not meant to be used for releasing stuff, it's messy, web pages are for that.

Apart from better organizing, the most important benefit of making xda a little web page apart from only forum would be i belive A LOT LESS REPEATED QUESTIONS inside forum itself == less trafic+less mess.

"noobs" that come to this page simply are not used to stiykies, or forum searches, they are used to simple web page interfaces.
[About XDA developers] aethelbert:
The more I read that, the more I like it. I can't really speak much knowing little about web design (well, more design in general).

Anyway, for my 2 cents. Yes I haven't been a member long and yes I haven't had a HTC-made device as long as the more senior members here, but I still think that this site should be exclusive to HTC and the devices manufactered by said company.

It's not as if there aren't other communities for these devices, and even if the admins were to allow these devices to be added, which would you choose? If you were to add only the highest selling devices on WinMo and/or Android you'd first have to decide what would be considered high selling, and even then there would be quite a number of handsets added.

To be honest, I wouldn't be terribly disappointed if the admins chose to add non-HTC devices to the forums. In fact, I'd be pleasantly surprised to see them added (I intend to purchase a Motorola Milestone when I scrape together enough moneys after busting my piano >.<). But for the sake of site speed and to avoid that homepage from being bloated with devices (moreso than it is now), I think it would be best to leave xda the way it is now.

EDIT: Oh, and dark background on light coloured text contrasting would be nice on my eyes, but it'd probably take too much away from the 'classic' xda-dev look.
[About XDA developers] Fallen Spartan:
hmmmm, I like the sound of this. Gonna spread the word for more comments in Mod forums
[About XDA developers] NuShrike:
I like to see an re-evaluation of forum software that doesn't suffer so much with more users and load. I'm reading vBulletin is a resource hog.

At least change the database backend from MySQL to say PostgreSQL so you can run backups concurrently while the forum is serving views instead of taking everybody down as it seems to happen now.

On the other side, stick with the most popular WinMob devices, especially the latest ones such as Omnia2, HD2, and get away from HTC only since they're selling out to be more mainstream and even less WinMob developer friendly.

Also, would be nice if people donated toward developer's time instead of prancing an entitled attitude and demanding free support.