keyboardjoy wrote: 15 Mar 2021, 23:01
Good evening everyone,
Please excuse the delay in responding to all of your comments, do allow me to first introduce myself.
I came across this forum serendipitously when seeking advice about how to adapt my keyboard to make it more personable for my office, which had banned it for making too much noise. The keyboard is an absolute delight. My background in this hobby pales in comparison to the likes of webwit and matt3o and I am doing my utmost to fully catch up and delve deep into this space.
Years back I was a moderator for a couple of pretty niche forums (one was fountain pens, but I digress)... and when I came across Deskthority I was impressed by the quality of this community. I then noticed that DT was seeking a new owner, I was intrigued and reached out to the admins.
My motivations for buying DT are several.
The first is, I really enjoyed moderating forums in the past and I relish the opportunity to delve back in.
Secondly, the acquisition was to protect the integrity of the wiki. Throughout my career I have been involved in open source communities, in some I played a role in governance. I am still on the committee of a couple of major open source software foundations. I truly value the importance of communities, trust and having access to pooled knowledge resources.
Thirdly, this strikes me as an opportunity to preserve the community but also invest in its development, initially from an infrastructure point of view, which will be done delicately with full awareness of the importance of the preservation of the rich information that you have all built up over time. I believe there is room for growth and I'd like to use my experience to help develop more attention for the community, through deeper community engagement, and perhaps a crowd-sourced blog.
This isn't about pesky advertising or commercialisation. For me, the future lies in authenticity and trusted, open sourced information, and quality forums like DT are a testament to what can be achieved - a self-perpetuating community that produces excellence. I want to understand how to harbour and nurture a community like this.
Also, everyone needs a hobby... keyboards are relatively new to me and I am excited to be able to combine my new interest with working with you to help sustain and develop this community.
Perhaps this post won't satisfy some - with a low post count, generic username and a new account, I almost feel like an intruder. I have discussed this carefully with webwit and he is still there, standing behind me to help direct what this new relationship with the community may look like.
This is new to me too and I'm going to rely on you to help guide me, and I hope you may be receptive to some of my new ideas. A user-generated blog is on my list, perhaps some of you may wish to contribute.
As for me personally, I'm in my mid-20s, currently based in London but hail from Scotland. I come from a tech background and was brought up to love computers and all things associated by my father, who is himself a computer scientist and mechanical keyboard enthusiast.
It's getting late here but I'll be in touch and will do my best to address your individual comments.
As for now, I'm going to wish everyone a very pleasant evening!
