Future of DT

[TheInverseKey]

As such there are better wikis that are popping up to replace Deskthority which also erodes the value of Deskthority.

Curious what other wikis you were referring to. Nice site btw!

It’s a weird situation and I understand both sides. I thought websites were supposed to be free!

Cherry
https://www.kbdarchive.org/cherry/

IBM
https://sharktastica.co.uk/

NMB
https://wiki.vintkeys.ca

[webwit]

[Muirium]

Cherry
https://www.kbdarchive.org/cherry/

IBM
https://sharktastica.co.uk/

NMB
https://wiki.vintkeys.ca

Thanks for the links. Poking around the Cherry database, which is new to me, I see lots of specs laid out in infobox format for the keyboards but no context. It’s definitely a database but doesn’t strike me as a wiki. None of that would stick for me: I’m all about the stories.


@Webwit: if every chunk is a dollar, how long would he take to eat what they paid you?

[thefarside]

To be clear, Ellipse only said that he'd cover up to $3,000-5,000 to cover a shortfall from $15,000. So technically he might be buying the car with $0 out of his own pocket. He would pay for the gas to put in that car, though. At least after he drains whatever he can raise in excess of that $15,000.

I think of it like funding the purchase of a town square rather than a car, without an ownership stake but continued free use. Not sure if that’s the right analogy either.

I understand not wanting to pay for something you don’t own and currently use free. I’m fond of the site and would be willing to chip in a little to fund the purchase to whomever the new owner is, but maybe I’m the only one

[Muirium]

…but continued free use…

Optimistic assumption! Nah, there would be fundraisers after a while and eventual flipping to someone else, I’m sure. You’re buying nothing. Literally.

[thefarside]

…but continued free use…

Optimistic assumption! Nah, there would be fundraisers after a while and eventual flipping to someone else, I’m sure. You’re buying nothing. Literally.

You’re probably right. Bring on the ads!

[Ellipse]

Thanks for your support thefarside. My interest check for this is because the current ownership is expected to end quite soon according to their own statements and outside of someone outright buying it or gathering funds, the next owners are not obliged to keep the site running in its current form, which is something I and many other folks want. After the site is sold again, members would have no say in what is changed. We have been extremely fortunate that the current owners have kept the look and feel of the site as it is.

I definitely agree that without the community supporting the development and spread of projects such as xwhatsit's controllers and the new Model F project, these projects may not even exist today and/or far fewer folks would be aware of them. A strong mechanical keyboard community helps all of those who may want to create and share their own group buys now and in the future. And that is why my hope is to keep the community together, especially since there is so much expertise here around great old keyboards. Many folks active here are not active on other keyboard forums.

Another buyer may not have the same intentions to keep things the way they are. The more folks wait, the price may go down and other buyers who may want to change things may be able to enter the bidding process. Who would want to be required by a future large company to receive email ads as a condition of membership on the site and also see banner ads and blog post review articles with with affiliate links, which would likely reduce active engagement? For a company or a single person to spend the full acquisition amount themselves (instead of a community-led group buy), that is exactly what they would need to do to recover something viewed as an investment instead of a group buy whose purpose is to keep the site alive and not commercialize the site itself. I remember a number of years ago signing up for Windows 10 insider (or some other beta) and being required to receive update emails as a condition of being an insider member.

It was mentioned that Deskthority usage has declined in recent years, though activity on other mechanical keyboard forums has increased, another reason it might not make sense for another business to purchase and commercialize the site even at half the current asking price. Are there any ideas on why this has happened? What do they have that we don't have here! Any recommendations to reverse this decline for Deskthority going forward? geekhack and reddit MK are also great resources for conducting interest checks and starting group buys, but my impression is that these sites have significantly grown in the number of group buys and discussions of buys that many great projects may be buried lower down on the topic lists. I would say that given the increased discussions and various projects it may make sense for them to offer several group buy discussion sub-boards with different categorizations, such as for non-MX switch custom keyboards / old style technologies, MX switch custom boards, custom MX key sets, other custom key sets, individual artisan keys, accessories, etc. rather than everything in one list.

Regarding ownership, as I mentioned before legally it would be difficult and costly in terms of funds and time to set up a nonprofit or other multi-owner structure with voting shares as well as for ongoing regulatory compliance, which is why I am wary of equity crowdfunding in this case for a relatively small amount. Regarding ongoing costs, yes I would expect to cover anything that members would not offer to cover. Even the full amount of $600 to $700 in additional server costs each year would not be a problem.

[VR20X6]

tl;dr

[soyuz]

Classic ellipse, writing a wall of BS in order to escape any kind of scrutiny. I really think OneCommerce are better owners than this guy lmao

[photekq]

Thanks for the links. Poking around the Cherry database, which is new to me, I see lots of specs laid out in infobox format for the keyboards but no context. It’s definitely a database but doesn’t strike me as a wiki. None of that would stick for me: I’m all about the stories.

It's not intended as a wiki, nor a repository of stories. Most of the keyboards there don't have much of a story, but they are interesting to Cherry collectors nonetheless. Hell, even if they did all have stories - it's no small task to write 900+ stories.

It is meant specifically to display unique models of Cherry keyboards via images and text, something which I never thought the wiki format was well-suited towards.

[ifohancroft]

I plan to comment some time tomorrow, as I don't feel like writing a long post right now, but I'm writing this now to remind myself to post tomorrow. So here's the TL;DR: for now.

I support Ellipse buying Deskthority, as the most important thing for me is keeping it alive (and not switching it to other forum and wiki software) and I don't care that I'll give some money towards that happening and won't own part of it.

I do have some ideas on improving it, if of course the community agrees. I'll post about them tomorrow. I believe those ideas may require development of phpBB plugins, which I'll gladly provide (I mean the development). I've been interested in doing phpBB and Wikimedia plugin and stuff development for awhile now, so what great motivation to do that than to improvide Deskthority for all of us.

P.S. After we secure Deskthority ownership, I think we can/should make a feedback thread where we can gather ideas/problems people have. For example I have a gripe with how hard it is to chronologically read a private messages thread (that's one of the suggestions I mentioned having, above), but again, I'll post about it tomorrow.

[wobbled]

Ellipse the majority of us do not want you as site owner. If you’re that desperate for it, buy it yourself and stop being a cheap fuck. Your text wall of pure bollocks doesn’t work on us. You clearly have the funds to pull this off after years of taking peoples money for a product you provide no technical support or warranty for, instead relying on peoples time, effort, and knowledge here to help fix any crap you might’ve sent out.
Since you rely on this place so heavily, put YOUR money into it and yours alone. Maybe ask for less than several grand for your NIB SSK so it actually sells and you might be able to justify dropping a few grand more on DT.
Your greed is utterly repulsive, we truly would be better off under onecommerce.

[Muirium]

It's not intended as a wiki, nor a repository of stories. Most of the keyboards there don't have much of a story, but they are interesting to Cherry collectors nonetheless. Hell, even if they did all have stories - it's no small task to write 900+ stories.

It is meant specifically to display unique models of Cherry keyboards via images and text, something which I never thought the wiki format was well-suited towards.

Agreed 100%. They're doing different jobs.

My reply was to TheInverseKey who linked your DB as proof that "there are better wikis" than DT's now. His own is more directly comparable to DT's, but laser focussed on NMB switches and not nearly as easy to navigate. Additionally, it won't grow at any speed without being open to community article submissions like a wiki.

Sharktastica's is impressive but again falls into the Just One Guy problem, and I’m forever flummoxed when trying to navigate it as well. Traditional wikis aren't perfect—the look, oy!—but I really miss their wealth of links and written submissions whenever I’m reading up on something elsewhere.

About 90% of my own use of the DT wiki is for learning, rather than an exact lookup for a part number or the like. I want to know about SMK switches or Omrons or something and wind up down the rabbit hole, just like Wikipedia on so many subjects. Wikis are golden for that, once they have enough content.

But aye, your DB's wealth of pictures is an improvement on the "pics TBD" placeholders padding out wikis.

[BuGless]

the majority of us do not want

Please try and only voice claims that can be substantiated. As soon as anyone starts to make unsubstantiated claims, it kind of makes anything else one claims questionable.
That is inefficient and a waste of energy. Considering the current climate crisis, this is undesirable in the broadest sense.

[soyuz]

the majority of us do not want

Please try and only voice claims that can be substantiated. As soon as anyone starts to make unsubstantiated claims, it kind of makes anything else one claims questionable.
That is inefficient and a waste of energy. Considering the current climate crisis, this is undesirable in the broadest sense.

I claim that your post is gibberish. The substantiation: just read it

[lhutton]

There were some site bugs with registration I remember, especially with certain domain names like gmail, for example.

This isn't an issue with the site or server. This is a DNS issue...one that has been discussed here in the past, would likely take 5 minutes to fix, but current owners don't seem to know how to deal with it.

Google has stopped delivering mail they're receiving on behalf of Gmail users that are either not DKIM-signed or that fail SPF checks. I'm assuming that either deskthority.net has not implemented DKIM or has it implemented incorrectly; I can definitely confirm that it does not have a TXT SPF record defined at all in its DNS zone. The simple fix is to just add a properly-constructed SPF record to the zone. A TXT record for .deskthority.net consisting of "v=spf1 a mx a:mech.deskthority.net -all" should do nicely.

The second problem that is likely causing DT email to be flagged by Gmail is that 1) the web server appears to be sending out the emails directly, rather than through an SMTP relay, 2) the IPv4 address of the DT server reverse-resolves (in-addr.arpa zone) to "mech.deskthority.net", 3) but mech.deskthority.net only exists as an MX record, and there is no matching A record that forward-resolves back to the same IP address. Having forward- and reverse-DNS resolution not match each other for the sending host is a red flag for spam. The fix for this is to simply add an A record to the zone for the FQDN mech.deskthority.net pointing at the same IP address that the root deskthority.net A record points to (the server itself).

Implementing both of these fixes would require somebody have write access to the deskthority.net zone file. DNS for DT appears to be hosted by Cloudflare, so whoever possesses the Cloudflare login credentials for the DT account should be able to take care of this.

I'm an email admin (been doing my own mail for 17 years, did it for a university before we went Google) and yeah this is stupidly easy to fix.

But, it might not fix Gmail delivery completely as they are finicky as all get out (Sendgrid makes good money for a reason). I do see a SPF record, but no DMARC when I check their DNS. The SPF is an include: directive which, IMO, isn't the way I'd do it:

Code: Select all

;; ANSWER SECTION:
deskthority.net.        243     IN      TXT     "v=spf1 include:zoho.eu ~all"
deskthority.net.        243     IN      TXT     "google-site-verification=i7fHoRn1i_XndsY57SIgFaMtF-94czJUXfwvsORudDc"
deskthority.net.        243     IN      TXT     "zoho-verification=zb33633008.zmverify.zoho.eu"

[soyuz]

Everything I've ever experienced with gmail is if you don't have SPF and DKIM you're going nowhere. I think my domains that I don't care about as much where I haven't added DMARC records are still deliverable with just that.

[lhutton]

Everything I've ever experienced with gmail is if you don't have SPF and DKIM you're going nowhere. I think my domains that I don't care about as much where I haven't added DMARC records are still deliverable with just that.

I've was a pretty early adopter of all three and Gmail still sometimes bins mail from my domains because it's a Tuesday it seems. They are infuriating to work with and I steer everyone I can clear of using a GMail account these days. Never had issues out of MS or anyone else.

[NathanA]

I'm an email admin (been doing my own mail for 17 years, did it for a university before we went Google) and yeah this is stupidly easy to fix.

But, it might not fix Gmail delivery completely as they are finicky as all get out (Sendgrid makes good money for a reason). I do see a SPF record, but no DMARC when I check their DNS. The SPF is an include: directive which, IMO, isn't the way I'd do it:

Code: Select all

deskthority.net.        243     IN      TXT     "v=spf1 include:zoho.eu ~all"

That's interesting since I could swear there was no SPF record the last time I checked.

In any case, looking at the headers of emails I have recently received from the DT server, the source IP is absolutely the web server, and the emails are not being relayed through zoho.eu mail servers. So I would expect the DT server to run afoul of "~all" thus causing mail sent by it to softfail.

They could fix this either by adding "a" to the TXT string as I mentioned previously (or "ip4:159.69.68.22" if they wanted to be explicit about it...but then that would require that they remember to specifically update the SPF record every time the IP address of the server had to change), or they could decide to simply reconfigure the server's outgoing mail to send everything through zoho.eu rather than attempt to deliver mail to recipient's servers directly. (Also, if they just listed "mx" in the record, since they already have three MX records that reference zoho.eu mail servers, they wouldn't need to bother with also putting "include:zoho.eu" in there, which would also ease future administrative burden if they ever change mail server providers). Thus why I suggested "a mx" earlier. "a:mech.deskthority.net" I added because it's not 100% clear to me if SPF check pass/fail would take in-addr.arpa PTR records into consideration or not.)

Everything I've ever experienced with gmail is if you don't have SPF and DKIM you're going nowhere. I think my domains that I don't care about as much where I haven't added DMARC records are still deliverable with just that.

On one of my vanity domains that I run a mail server on & have for years, I only have an SPF record. No DMARC, no DKIM set up. I can deliver mail to Gmail accounts with zero problems. In fact, I have a permanent forward in place from one of my mailboxes to one of my Gmail accounts. Mail is delivered just fine. Years ago, I had problems before adding an SPF record (+ also made sure I was "remailing" and not "forwarding", as true forwarding would trigger an SPF failure since it would look like my server was sending mail on behalf of domains that don't belong to me). Haven't had a problem since.

The Google article linked to previously with their requirements mentions that DMARC is only required if you sent > 5,000 mails to Gmail servers on a daily basis. If all you're doing is running a mail server that's hosting mailboxes for actual, real people, then you probably don't need to worry about this. If you are running a system that sends out automated emails (like a phpBB server, say; or a listserv, or a Mailchimp-like service, etc.), you may or may not ever run into a problem here, depending on how busy and active of a user-base you have. My guess is DT isn't sending out that many emails, and so lack of a DMARC record is not the issue here (especially since this "requirement" appears to be new as of February, and DT has had problems delivering mail to Gmail inboxes for a LONG time now). But probably better safe than sorry, especially since it's such an easy "fix". However, it's almost surely not "the" problem.

I've was a pretty early adopter of all three and Gmail still sometimes bins mail from my domains because it's a Tuesday it seems. They are infuriating to work with and I steer everyone I can clear of using a GMail account these days. Never had issues out of MS or anyone else.

As usual, it's the bad actors that are ruining things for everyone. Whether they are overreacting or not is debatable, but what's pretty obvious is that all of these rules and restrictions that they are implementing are in place in order to curb junkmail. Such a pursuit is a constant cat-and-mouse / whack-a-mole game for providers. They're likely also tight-lipped about all of the things that they are doing to try to detect garbage coming in, so as not to tip off the baddies about how they are detecting their junk & not show their entire hand / give them clues about how to circumvent the detection.

As for the rest of this thread, that discussion appears to be going about as well as I expected...sigh

[BuGless]

Everything I've ever experienced with gmail is if you don't have SPF and DKIM you're going nowhere.

Since beginning this month, I see on several domains, that having just an SPF does not suffice any longer.
The only thing that works seems to be SPF + DKIM or SPF + DMARC (at a minimum). It's not necessary to have all three.

[AndyJ]

If I remember correctly there were some other, non-keyboard forums that have been sold or shut down in recent years with the forum deleted and the site converted to a promotional site with various articles, which I would not want.

VerticalScope out of Canada. Their modus operandi is to approach a forum owner and make a deal in secret. The first the users ever know is when VS' "team" shows up, boots off the old moderators, deletes any posts or threads asking WTF just happened, and turns the site into a link farm. They mostly target "sporting" forums, apparently by the domain name more than actual content. A couple of forums have managed to survive under the VS jackboot, but most of the others are just hollow shells after the users left rather than put up with VS' changes.

[NathanA]

Since beginning this month, I see on several domains, that having just an SPF does not suffice any longer.
The only thing that works seems to be SPF + DKIM or SPF + DMARC (at a minimum). It's not necessary to have all three.

Interesting. I'm still getting away with SPF-only, so they must be selectively enforcing this based on some other hidden criteria...

[webwit]

Domain and IP reputation.

[NathanA]

Domain and IP reputation.

Seems like a reasonable assumption. But Google will never tell you whether you are warm or cold.

[lhutton]

As usual, it's the bad actors that are ruining things for everyone. Whether they are overreacting or not is debatable, but what's pretty obvious is that all of these rules and restrictions that they are implementing are in place in order to curb junkmail. Such a pursuit is a constant cat-and-mouse / whack-a-mole game for providers. They're likely also tight-lipped about all of the things that they are doing to try to detect garbage coming in, so as not to tip off the baddies about how they are detecting their junk & not show their entire hand / give them clues about how to circumvent the detection.

At least at face value yes, I suspect given Google and MS being the 800lb gorillas in the email space these days that they have very little interest in fixing it. Google's postmaster tools are neigh on useless and I've gotten more than few sales pitches along the lines of "this wouldn't happen if you moved your domain to GSuite." Gmail end users don't see misclassification of mail as a Google problem, you're the one who's different so it's your fault. "Just get a Gmail account like a normal person."

Funnily enough Google will also mark mail coming from their own services as spam. I've got a Google account for my YouTube stuff and notifications from YT often end up in junk. I'm starting to wonder if the people who run the back end of the service left years ago or something.

A solid chunk of the spam I see these days comes from compromised Gmail or MS hosted accounts, in fact SpamCop has put some of their nodes on their blacklist a few times in the last 5-6 years. I doubt Gmail or MS are blocking each other despite that. I've had my MX record and IP for well over a decade and in that time I've never hit a blacklist but I'm sure Google has some kind of internal reputation problem. I suspect it's also a volume since I'm a very low volume SMTP these days so I never trip whatever threshold for them to start trusting/scoring my domains any more.

I'm not 100% sold that it's malicious on their end but if another mail provider shuts down and moves their clients to Gmail due to these issues it's no skin off Google's back kind of thing. In comparison MS has been far more straight forward when it comes to inboxing.

[webwit]

Domain and IP reputation.

Seems like a reasonable assumption. But Google will never tell you whether you are warm or cold.

https://support.google.com/a/answer/9981691

[NathanA]

Domain and IP reputation.

Seems like a reasonable assumption. But Google will never tell you whether you are warm or cold.

https://support.google.com/a/answer/9981691

I'll have to check this out. I wonder when they added this. Back in 2014, I ran into an issue with delivery to Gmail, and they absolutely REFUSED to talk to me about it. No thanks to them and after troubleshooting on my own, I eventually figured out they were discriminating against my server's IP address, not my domain (I could change the server IP & update all DNS records to point to the "new" one, and the problem would go away instantly; switch back to the original IP and problem was back instantly), but every other RBL and IP reputation checker out there gave me a 100% clean bill of health. All I could do was fill out a form that Google provided to report the issue to them and hope that they whitelisted my IP, but the report would just go into a black hole from my perspective (didn't generate a ticket or anything, nor provide any direct line of communication to an actual human being after filing it, nor were you given any kind of filing ID so that you could go back later and look up the status). It was very clear that they were being intentionally incommunicative, and IIRC, at the time, one of their support pages even basically told you not to expect a response from them. I have no idea why they singled that IP address out even though nobody else reported any issues with it, and they were not about to ever tell me why, even if they eventually decided in my favor & to un-list it from whatever internal list it clearly got added to.

[guidemetothelight]

2 cents more than I’ll be putting into Ellipse’s donation can.

µ making me laugh out loud in the classroom....
but for real, I dont see myself paying into the fund as well.
I love DT and I would hate to see it die, especially because all of the wonderful people I met here and the treasure trove of information I learned / was able too quickly look up on the wiki.
I hate discord as a replacement for the forum.
While I havent bought one of ellipses boards yet, thats the more likely way of supporting him in his endeavours. (at least for me)
Iam pretty indifferent towards him, but I see the point photekq raised.
Theres only one person who would have a finanical incentive to keep this site running and that is ellipse.
If he really makes / made 6 figures with his production of the model f , I think he should shell out the money and not take any funds from the outside, that would just complicate things and fan the flames of resentment even more.

[Ellipse]

With permission I am sharing (anonymously) feedback that someone sent me. I don't know much about the technical stuff mentioned here. I say it's better to slightly overpower hosting to anticipate an increase in users!

"I might have some information that might be of use to you if you end up buying the forum. In the post, you mentioned that the hosting of the forum needs a dedicated server with 64GB RAM, which imo is an overkill for a forum with such low posting activity. I used to run and host multiple forums in the past, and such hardware requirements are a sign of a lack of proper configuration. I just did a quick google search, and as expected, they seem to be running the website on an apache server, probably LAMP or WAMP setup. I remember such popular setups taking significantly more resources than they should have, and switching to an nginx + fastcgi setup would greatly reduce the hardware resources needed. A VPS with 2G RAM should be more than enough to host this. On hetzner, such setup costs about 12 euros per month, but other options might be cheaper. Nginx+fastcgi should be able to run the same software - phpbb without requiring a change of the software running the board."

[VR20X6]

switching to an nginx + fastcgi setup would greatly reduce the hardware resources needed

Gosh, I guess we've been collectively hallucinating those nginx errors.