What goes in the upgrade forums

[GoodThings2Life]

As a long-time forum user (here and elsewhere), I don't really mind all the duplicate threads, but what I find confusing (downright overwhelming, in fact) is having to sort through all the things you can do with your phone directly out of the box versus things you can do with your phone after flashing custom ROMs. Not to mention all the bugs and such that can creep up or be fixed based on those conditions.

If I'm a new Touch Pro user here, and I go to the Touch Pro forum, it used to be simple-- I have a stock ROM, so I just start in the Touch Pro forum. If I wanted to kick it up a notch and start dealing with cooking, I moved into the Upgrades subforum. But now, if I'm that same newbie, I have to wade through thousands of posts only to find out half of them only apply to cooked ROMs.

Even as a pretty advanced user, I like supporting newbies on stock ROM's, and since I don't use custom ROMs, it's hard to legitimately offer support for them. It's like calling Microsoft and asking for help with a Mac issue just because it happens to have Microsoft Office on it. What I really want to do is refer them back to Apple... or in our case, Mighty Mike, Juggs, etc. etc.

Unfortunately, there's no easy solution that doesn't require a bit of effort to manage. You don't want to discourage new people from cooking and sharing their contributions, but you can't just hand them a playground and let them all manage themselves, and you can't create their own playgrounds all the time either.


What I would propose, however, is something similar to the VIP forum called, "ROM Cooking" or whatever. In that forum is a collection of sub-forums for ROM cooks with over x number of posts in an "upgrade" forum (or any combination of upgrade forums) and y reputation. The cook would then become a moderator of that sub-forum, and all posts/threads could be managed independently. For the new cooks and "beginner" upgrade information, the existing Upgrades forums could be used.

One advantage of this would be that the chefs who cook on multiple devices could have one place to go for all their efforts. Another is that it's something new users can grow into more gradually and not be overwhelmed.

Of course, one disadvantage of this is that when you're a newbie to cooking, you generally want to start with the "trusted" works not necessarily with other newbie creations. To solve that, I would suggest a stickied, read-only post that links to the "ROM Cooking" forum and to "recommended" chefs.

Mind you, I propose this and feel bad for mindfrost for having to figure out how to implement it if it's embraced, but meh, he's a smart guy-- he'll figure it out!