Future of DT

[PlacaFromHell]

What about a Multilingual wiki? At least for me, it's impossible make a contribution to it due of my bad schoolish english. Also, that would make it easier to reach more people. It's easier to become familiar with a concept in your first language than learn it entirely in another one, even being the English a global language.
Be sure I will be part of the spanish wiki if it becomes a thing.

[__red__]

I just wanted to say that your English is excellent so please don't ever think that that is any kind of issue for you to contribute to the English language wiki.

(It's a wiki - you can make your own spanish section)

[PlacaFromHell]

Awww, thanks dude!

[matt3o]

we can't really put ourselves into more languages. let's try to make the english version the best we can

[Hypersphere]

we can't really put ourselves into more languages. let's try to make the english version the best we can

Reluctantly, I have to agree. As a native speaker of English, I feel guilty that non-native speakers feel compelled to also be at least somewhat familiar with English as a second or nth language, while I can continue to be lazy and focus almost exclusively on my own language. However, especially for a reference resource such as the DT wiki, it needs to be maximally accessible to most people who would have an interest in the keyboard lore and other technical tidbits that we deposit there. I am highly sympathetic to non-native speakers of English, but if we had articles in several languages, it would splinter the resource and perhaps ultimately make it less useful for all concerned.

[matt3o]

on other news, we purchased the new server! SSD baby! broooom brooooooom! Hopefully tomorrow I will be configuring it.

[TheInverseKey]

on other news, we purchased the new server! SSD baby! broooom brooooooom! Hopefully tomorrow I will be configuring it.

Vroom Vroom the IO on that baby hopefully will be screaming fast.

[Chyros]

on other news, we purchased the new server! SSD baby! broooom brooooooom! Hopefully tomorrow I will be configuring it.

Vroom Vroom the IO on that baby hopefully will be screaming fast.

In the words of the Virgin Mary; "Gies warp factor ten and we'll see if it's shit off a shovel right enough!"

Spoiler:

[__red__]

on other news, we purchased the new server! SSD baby! broooom brooooooom! Hopefully tomorrow I will be configuring it.

Can I interest you in your Lord and Saviour NixOS?

As an example, you deploy mediawiki like this:

Code: Select all

services.httpd.extraSubservices =
    [ { serviceType = "mediawiki";
        siteName = "your.sitename.here";
        id = "unique_identifier";
        dbName = "dbname";
        dbUser = "dbusername";
        dbPassword = "redacted";
        defaultSkin = "MonoBook";
        extraConfig = ''
          wfLoadSkin( 'MonoBook' );
          wfLoadExtension( 'WikiEditor' );
          $wgDefaultUserOptions['usebetatoolbar'] = 1;
        '';
      }
    ];

[__red__]

(more importantly, if you fsck-up - you can rewind all your configuration changes, upgrades, OS builds... etc).

I'll spin up an example VM for you to play with if you'd like a demo.

[Hypersphere]

on other news, we purchased the new server! SSD baby! broooom brooooooom! Hopefully tomorrow I will be configuring it.

Is it NVMe M.2 or SATA III?

[matt3o]

on other news, we purchased the new server! SSD baby! broooom brooooooom! Hopefully tomorrow I will be configuring it.

Can I interest you in your Lord and Saviour NixOS?

I heard of it but I'm not fluent. Not sure I want to put myself into it considering all the work I have to do with the forum/wiki update.

[matt3o]

What do you think of a "Relics & Best finds" category?

[Anakey]

well it would depend what a relic is i mean is that any old beamspring under the sun or something more unique?

[__red__]

I heard of it but I'm not fluent. Not sure I want to put myself into it considering all the work I have to do with the forum/wiki update.

It's one of those things that would require a somewhat steep learning curve up front but will save your bacon (and rez the pig) over time. Maybe not this time...

Regardless, if you need another set of hands - you know where to find me.

[matt3o]

thanks I will take advantage of that!

[Norman_]

edit: most of that was unnecessary

wrong thread in hindsight but i like the new design

[cookie]

Reading this thread made me realize that I am here for over 7 years.
So I was wondering what made me stay that long and why I keep comming back?

In my case it all started with the need of a new keyboard this transitioned into an exploratory phase where I scrambled ebay for anything that is potentionally a mechanical keyboard. Some workshops here and there and a bit of "keyboard porn" now and then. But I've settled to an HHKB for quite a while now but I still come back every now and then to have a lovely chat (or ramble about how shitty Razer is).

I'd say it's more quiet than back in 2013 when then whole thing started to gain attention, but that's something I like about this place.
We have the best input device related Wiki there is, we should cherish it!
The overall politeness and quality of conversations is pretty darn high!
Close work with manufacturers happened here, that's something to be proud of!
Yes DT is more oriented towards vintage keyboards and less flashy but I personally like that.

What I am trying to say is that DT does not fit in the pattern how mainstream users consume information and preserve knowledge nowdays. But is that really something DT should strive for?
I think it's important to define what "Relevant" actually means when we are speaking about input devices? That has to be well articulated so that we can move in the correct direction.

Let's talk numbers of the 3 relevant keyboard communities:
Reddit

Code: Select all

Subs: 335.763
Online: 1.619
Loyalty Index: 0,48 %
Daily comments: 1353
Daily posts: 243
(Daily = last 24h not an average)
----
DT-Member-Factor: Reddit is 23x bigger
DT-Activity-Factor: Reddit is 2x bigger
DT-Post-Factor: No data available
DT-Threads-Factor: No data available

Geek Hack

Code: Select all

User: 67.656
Online: 1.845
Loyalty Index: 2,72 %
Posts: 2.459.585 
Threads: 85.368
----
DT-Member-Factor: GH is 4,8x bigger
DT-Activity-Factor: GH is 2,3x bigger
DT-Post-Factor: GH has 5,7x more posts
DT-Threads-Factor: GH has 6,6x more threads

Deskthority

Code: Select all

User: 14.583 
Online: 801
Loyalty Index: 5,49 %
Posts: 426.910
Threads: 12.902

Please take those numbers with a grain of salt, it's just a snapshot. We need to consider different time zones when calculating the Loyalty Index (Stupid name I know).
But it shows what I think might be something. The DT users are the most loyal ones.
Also if you compare the thread and post numbers we are way behind, I couldn't compare this with Reddit since I lack overall data. But is quantity really a good benchmark? And does it mean that DT is not relevant anymore?
I don't believe this to be honest. Numbers can't tell quality and I believe strongly that quality is the key to stay relevant and to set yourelf apart from other places.

Let's talk about keyboard snobbery as a hobby!
The spectrum is quite wide, it goes from building a keyboard knowledge base over vintage boards to workshops/mods all the way to pure esthetics and karma whoring. Way different interests and motivations.
From my personal experience I don't think that any of those 3 places perfectly combine all aspects of the

Forums and subreddits are technically and psychologically entirely different. Reddit has a platform wide reward system called karma, which is a huge motivation boost for most people to become an active member. But the overall content is extremely short lived and forgotten withing a few days or even hours. Karma also makes it quite hard for quality posts to gain attention if they don't meet the current flavour of the subreddit. The masses decide what's hot and what's not, which I do not like. I've seen brilliant posts that deserved way more upvotes but it was not what the users wanted, so they faded away never to be found again. Also people will ruthlessly punish unpopular opinions with downvotes. The result is an angry mob moderated safe space, the prefect breeding ground for ignorance! Due to it's nature, it's the worst place to store profound knowledge, because nobody cares or will ever find your initial post if the mods don't pin them in the subreddits description page. Also the wiki is a joke, but to be fair it's not the place where people seek knowledge, it's about showing off and getting those upvotes! I thik that's also one of the reasons how this hobby has changed in an unpleasent direction, a lot are just consuming like crazy and on the way they like to get some karma back for their insanely rad custom board.

Forums on the other hand are a blessing when you are looking for knowlege, serious discussions and actual dialogs without being shut down by regular users. You have a better way to search threads and posts, find what you are looking for. The overall quality of content is better. Especially here at DT. You have a few threads reagarding the same topic where everyone is engaged in a conversation unlike the endless stream of re occuring shitposts in a subreddit which gets boring relatively quickly. It's less repetitive in my opinion. And let's not mention our wiki, which is outstanding and definitely takes the cake here!

But what's the conclusion now?
The word "relevant" gives me trouble, because I am not sure what the goal is and if the result is somethig I'd enjoy?
I've heared some great ideas, like reviving the workshop section. That's always been my favorite one, I like to witness a creative process where the end result is something unique and intriguing influenced by a community around it. Even better if I learned something along the way!
I must say that I also like the idea of expanding into new areas to build towards a more diverse community. At the end it's Deskthority right? The authority about everything you'd like to put on your desk and not just keyboards. Be it mechanical pencils, notebooks or other input devices. If the endresult is something wonderful and "tres chique" count me in!

I personally believe that the next big thing are mice, one has to start investing some time there.
The gap in quality between a custom board and a mouse is absolutely bananas right now... Just one needs to break a lance for it!

Yeah let's talk about our goals for the future! Geez that's a long one.


TLDR;
Weltschmerz is biting me in the arse!

[matt3o]

TLDR;
Weltschmerz is biting me in the arse!

thanks for your input @cookie. Honestly I don't care about reddit or geekhack. And the loyalty index would be relevant only at a comparable userbase and we are not even close (if we were 4 friends coming to a website everyday the loyalty would be 100% but it would still be irrelevant).

My point (good or bad) is that forums don't serve the same purpose than 3-4 years ago. That's because people generally prefer instant gratification and other platforms do that job better. "Look at my new great find/new keycaps/whatever" makes absolutely no sense today on a forum, because on reddit/whatsapp/etc you get an instant karma.

Of course we come here for "the good stuff", the quality content. Unfortunately the wiki lost some of its most valuable contributors. The forum... well, people prefer to post on youtube and imagur apparently. We talk a lot about "community" nowadays but everybody is much more selfish today. They prefer to open a new podcast/youtubechannel/whatever instead of contributing to a real community like DT that is 100% free, 100% independent, 100% self sustained, 100% unbiased (geekhack owned by massdrop, r/mk just feeds reddit). Heck some even open new forums spreading even more the resource thin.

I already said this on the other thread. The only way to survive is by working on and valuing quality content. Attracting more people and get the wheel rolling again. But I can't do that alone.

[Muirium]

Consumers vs. tinkerers…
Passive vs. active…
Needy vs. generous…

[cookie]

Honestly I don't care about reddit or geekhack.

I couldn't agree more, I was just throwing this in because I still don't really know how to measure relevancy?
Is it the popularity? The user base? The guests visiting?
Or is it about running DT awards and having sponsorships with companies and getting people to stay here and explore the forum and maybe get active once in a while?
Or cool projects (I like this one)? I really liked the time when all of us got creative and we made stuff out of necessity!
Do we want to torture our wallets even more with a mechanical pencil category ?
How about something like "Every Day Carry" I am interested in this as well, and like to see what people need everyday and how they incorporate their tech into this.

That's because people generally prefer instant gratification and other platforms do that job better.

Man this is a sad one for me. The impatience and selfishness that is nurtured by this "instant gratification" mindset really gets me. I saw this quite a bit when I was doing my HHKB sticker GB. I thought it would be nice to share this with my peers... I got few times into a pickle when people were ordering quite a few so that other couldn't get one as well and I had to negociate if they really needed 25 stickers? Geez it was like dealing with a little kid sometimes. I think most of us aggree that we don't want to feed that right? But to be fair, most of the people were lovely persons

Unfortunately the wiki lost some of its most valuable contributors. The forum... well, people prefer to post on youtube and imagur apparently. We talk a lot about "community" nowadays but everybody is much more selfish today. They prefer to open a new podcast/youtubechannel/whatever instead of contributing to a real community like DT that is 100% free, 100% independent, 100% self sustained, 100% unbiased (geekhack owned by massdrop, r/mk just feeds reddit). Heck some even open new forums spreading even more the resource thin.

I am certainly not up to date about the wiki contributors, they were always the silent heroes that really made our wiki extraordinary.
Really a shame to hear this

I already said this on the other thread. The only way to survive is by working on and valuing quality content. Attracting more people and get the wheel rolling again. But I can't do that alone.

I've watched the stuff you've done over the last years, that was out just of this world mate. I always wonder how you managed all the stress involved In that regard, thank you very much.

One of my new years resolutions is to spend more time with projects I like, be it contributing to some open source projects or working on keyboard related stuff. I mean it's been a while. Let's get the weel rolling again!

Edit:

Consumers vs. tinkerers…
Passive vs. active…
Needy vs. generous…

The drawbacks of mainstream!

[adhoc]

I was going to mention that to me, it feels like the interest in mechanical keyboards has lowered since maybe 7-10 years ago. But Google Trends tell me my feelings are wrong.

I don't know. I don't have any accounts to various social media platforms and I don't understand them. I get nothing out of scrolling through pictures every day, day in, day out. Reddit is, in my opinion, designed ground up not to encourage conversations. Voting on posts alone means the rule of majority, but following a conversation is a nightmare there, especially with bigger threads with lots of replies.

It feels like people love showing off their new toys and Deskthority simply does not accommodate for that. Perhaps we should make a new section instead of wiki, where instead of text you can only upload pictures and instead of comments you can only upvote or downvote. I'm only kidding, of course, but also not really.

[lhutton]

I was going to mention that to me, it feels like the interest in mechanical keyboards has lowered since maybe 7-10 years ago. But Google Trends tell me my feelings are wrong.

I think Razer and other gaming companies have co-opted mechanical keyboard to mean one of those RGB scifi font things they sell. That would explain the Google Trends. As far an old school mechanical boards you may be on to something. Reddit's Mechanical Keyboard sub is basically all that stuff (and the artisan keycap things).

I'm more of a lurker type (basically everywhere, IRC and other forums too, took me a long time to make an account) but I do enjoy the old web board set up of old. Not much for social media as it stands today I really don't care for that popular software everyone's using for forums now. Discourse I think it's called? https://discuss.pixls.us/ uses it. Too much reddit in the layout there.

[abrahamstechnology]

I think our goal should be for the return of mechanical keyboards to the everyday desk. We should be as less gimmicky as possible (opposite of Reddit). We should focus on rebuilding old boards for another round of reliable service, and commission new boards and switches that are every bit as faithful to their older counterparts as possible.

[Shown1]

TLDR;
Weltschmerz is biting me in the arse!

thanks for your input @cookie. Honestly I don't care about reddit or geekhack. And the loyalty index would be relevant only at a comparable userbase and we are not even close (if we were 4 friends coming to a website everyday the loyalty would be 100% but it would still be irrelevant).

My point (good or bad) is that forums don't serve the same purpose than 3-4 years ago. That's because people generally prefer instant gratification and other platforms do that job better. "Look at my new great find/new keycaps/whatever" makes absolutely no sense today on a forum, because on Whatsapp plusreddit/whatsapp/etc you get an instant karma.

Of course we come here for "the good stuff", the quality content. Unfortunately the wiki lost some of its most valuable contributors. The forum... well, people prefer to post on youtube and imagur apparently. We talk a lot about "community" nowadays but everybody is much more selfish today. They prefer to open a new podcast/youtubechannel/whatever instead of contributing to a real community like DT that is 100% free, 100% independent, 100% self sustained, 100% unbiased (geekhack owned by massdrop, r/mk just feeds reddit). Heck some even open new forums spreading even more the resource thin.

I already said this on the other thread. The only way to survive is by working on and valuing quality content. Attracting more people and get the wheel rolling again. But I can't do that alone.

You are right about social media. Since these platforms have become popular on the net, people have stopped using the forum and I think this is the reason why forums are closed.

[Muirium]

Social media is liberating. It brings the shameless inner asshole right out of everyone! What a gift to humanity.

[Polecat]

Social media is liberating. It brings the shameless inner asshole right out of everyone! What a gift to humanity.

True, but at least we know who to hate now.

[Muirium]

Everyone!!!

[darkcruix]

Everyone!!!

The pendulum is swinging back ... as it always did.

This form has brought together so many ... yes, let me say it ... brilliant people (especially those who don't know they are). What I have learned over the years is insane.

Social Media - ha ha ha ... I say it with the words of Ricky Gervais: "It is like reading every public toilet wall in the world".

[Archie]

Forums are generally dying all over the web. Google, reddit, facebook, instagram, discord, ... they are killing them, but there are a few that still work, so I guess there is hope.

Definitely. Yes forums as such follow the fate of dinosaurs - evolution is hard to prevent. But despite reptiles aren't rule the world anymore, the most militant or best protected ones still exist: ask any crocodile or tortoise about that!