* Arantor is fairly certain that new beta testers haven't made the cut at this point.
As said before, people who have joined pretty much just to ask if they can participate aren't really the people we're interested in. They're a certain kind of people, a group of people who have historically been observed to ask and get but not contribute anything meaningful - and why should they? They've got their shiny.
I'll say this again: if you want to help, demonstrate a willingness to do so. Asking for beta tester access isn't the way to help us - because if you can't be bothered to contribute to conversations much, you probably aren't going to contribute much in the way of testing. As it stands, the trend is holding up this time as well.
If you do want to help and are prepared to spend some time, read the discussions that have gone on. Add your thoughts - and don't just add '+1' or 'Great idea' comments. Tell us why you think they're great ideas. Or why they're not. There are people around here who think Nao and I can't do any wrong. Those people either don't know us well enough or don't watch what's going on - we make mistakes, errors of judgement and so on. The trick is that we recover and figure out what the best path is.
I guess what I'm getting at is that we don't need people much who are interested in the destination. We need people more who are interested in the journey as well, who are interested in looking at what we're suggesting, and being prepared to say it's wrong if it's wrong. We may not agree to start with, but at least if you're willing to tell us something's wrong, we might be able to fix it. And that begins BEFORE releases. That happens during development.
Participating in our discussions is at least as important as any amount of beta testing, and in the long run possibly more so.
