Potential community sale...

[Raqem]

Given how quickly your offer was taken up, I bet you could have asked for the buyer to pay the PayPal fees, too. 
 
Then again, you did go from $10k to $15k, so I guess you already thought of that. 
 
 /s
 ( ^---- in case anyone needed that )

[HotRoderX]

just my 2 cents as I am new but.. I think the sight owner had his reasons and bottom line is this. Unless someone was helping pony up cost to keep the sight running with the owner. Then they have no room to talk. We don't know his situation exactly. The only thing he said was he had 3 mortgages. Perhaps he has a very good reason to need to sell suddenly. People have there reason's and while it could have sucked it seems things have worked out for the best. Personally i am excited. I think the website could use a bit of a update. This gives it a chance. I know there have been some things people have complained about, including PM system, etc.

As far as Zeal goes, I don't see a issue what so ever. Zeal's not going to risk his reputation or his name to do anything questionable. Zeal is a very well known part of the community that is still relatively small.

[amnesia0287]

I’m pretty disappointed with how this has all played out. I have absolutely no issues with Zeal, but we’re now in a position where a vendor owns the site, which completely goes against the conflict of interest policies we’ve been operating under. I just really don’t understand why the mod team couldn’t be included in this in any capacity, I’m sure we could have found some alternate solutions to weigh in addition...

You've been great to quote today. Read my mind.

Bad situation all around, but I'm glad that Zeal is actually aware of what happens on the site, so I do look forward to seeing things improve.

I agree with all this. I'm very uncomfortable with a vendor owning the site, but it's done now so let's just hope this place doesn't lose it's magic.

While it’s still early stages, I’ve been talking to zeal and if things go well we will be working together to build a new modern purpose built geekhack. This is something I have been interested in doing for a while and started planning a month ago or something like that, so when I saw this thread it seemed like kismet.

It’s still super early. But my goal is to build a platform from scratch with support for modern browsers and Mobile devices. With proper search and such. I want interest checks and keyboards and group buys to be actual functional entities instead of just threads. They will still have comments and such, but I want them to actually have properties like prices and start and end dates and be searchable and filterable. So if you want to see all group buys ending this week, you just search “group buys ending this week”, the search engine supports contextual lookup, and since each GB has an actual end date, your search result would be just that. If you click on TGR, the TGR page could list all the TGR boards. Any TGR buys and ICs. Etc. I also want to support watchlists and smart notifications. If you want a LZ board, set a watch for LZ ICs, GBs and Classifieds, then get notifications (email, sms, possibly apps, etc).

We also discussed content management and our current plan is to continue with community moderation. Neither one of us has much interest in moderating the site ourselves, and it just makes avoiding any impropriety easier and helps make people more comfortable. My current though is we come up with some sort of rules/community bylaws and all agree to follow them. But there will need to be lots of feedback to get to the right destination.

This is only a small part of the complete idea, but I truly think we can make a better and more inclusive community site for everyone. In the short term I will work with zeal on updating and stabilizing the site. I expect it will be at least a few months of work before I’ve got a working platform and I’m ready to start a closed beta, but one of the things I want to commit to is ensuring continuity of all the existing data. I will likely setup an archive version of the old site as well, but my actual intention will be to migrate all legacy content into the new site to take advantage of all the new features like real search.

I also want to say I absolutely understand everyone’s concerns, but I just want to be clear, my goal start to finish is to make a better site for the community to help it grow and make everyone’s lives easier. I also do believe some form of minor monetization is important, because i would very much like to have servers in multiple regions to maximize perf and availability. And i think the site should be self sustaining and not worry about shutting down month to month. But more importantly I would love to find a way to set aside some funds to sponsor events, maybe a full scale keyboard convention, or run events like a prototype contest where people compete to design keyboards and then we buy prototypes for the winners. I’d also love to have money available to help get more buys to moq. Now this is all my personal opinions and zeal might not agree with everything. If I make profit, that is what I plan to use it for. If there is no good way to do it, then I’ll let that part of my dream die.

That said, I am also completely cognizant that I am designing a site for everyone, not just myself. I absolutely want peoples feedback on what they want and don’t want. I think we can find a balance to make the best site for everyone. Please tell me your ideas and concerns. I’d like to do my best to consider and address as many of them as I can.

[Sneaky Potato]

I’m pretty disappointed with how this has all played out. I have absolutely no issues with Zeal, but we’re now in a position where a vendor owns the site, which completely goes against the conflict of interest policies we’ve been operating under. I just really don’t understand why the mod team couldn’t be included in this in any capacity, I’m sure we could have found some alternate solutions to weigh in addition...

You've been great to quote today. Read my mind.

Bad situation all around, but I'm glad that Zeal is actually aware of what happens on the site, so I do look forward to seeing things improve.

I agree with all this. I'm very uncomfortable with a vendor owning the site, but it's done now so let's just hope this place doesn't lose it's magic.

While it’s still early stages, I’ve been talking to zeal and if things go well we will be working together to build a new modern purpose built geekhack. This is something I have been interested in doing for a while and started planning a month ago or something like that, so when I saw this thread it seemed like kismet.

It’s still super early. But my goal is to build a platform from scratch with support for modern browsers and Mobile devices. With proper search and such. I want interest checks and keyboards and group buys to be actual functional entities instead of just threads. They will still have comments and such, but I want them to actually have properties like prices and start and end dates and be searchable and filterable. So if you want to see all group buys ending this week, you just search “group buys ending this week”, the search engine supports contextual lookup, and since each GB has an actual end date, your search result would be just that. If you click on TGR, the TGR page could list all the TGR boards. Any TGR buys and ICs. Etc. I also want to support watchlists and smart notifications. If you want a LZ board, set a watch for LZ ICs, GBs and Classifieds, then get notifications (email, sms, possibly apps, etc).

We also discussed content management and our current plan is to continue with community moderation. Neither one of us has much interest in moderating the site ourselves, and it just makes avoiding any impropriety easier and helps make people more comfortable. My current though is we come up with some sort of rules/community bylaws and all agree to follow them. But there will need to be lots of feedback to get to the right destination.

This is only a small part of the complete idea, but I truly think we can make a better and more inclusive community site for everyone. In the short term I will work with zeal on updating and stabilizing the site. I expect it will be at least a few months of work before I’ve got a working platform and I’m ready to start a closed beta, but one of the things I want to commit to is ensuring continuity of all the existing data. I will likely setup an archive version of the old site as well, but my actual intention will be to migrate all legacy content into the new site to take advantage of all the new features like real search.

I also want to say I absolutely understand everyone’s concerns, but I just want to be clear, my goal start to finish is to make a better site for the community to help it grow and make everyone’s lives easier. I also do believe some form of minor monetization is important, because i would very much like to have servers in multiple regions to maximize perf and availability. And i think the site should be self sustaining and not worry about shutting down month to month. But more importantly I would love to find a way to set aside some funds to sponsor events, maybe a full scale keyboard convention, or run events like a prototype contest where people compete to design keyboards and then we buy prototypes for the winners. I’d also love to have money available to help get more buys to moq. Now this is all my personal opinions and zeal might not agree with everything. If I make profit, that is what I plan to use it for. If there is no good way to do it, then I’ll let that part of my dream die.

That said, I am also completely cognizant that I am designing a site for everyone, not just myself. I absolutely want peoples feedback on what they want and don’t want. I think we can find a balance to make the best site for everyone. Please tell me your ideas and concerns. I’d like to do my best to consider and address as many of them as I can.

Well ****, I’m sold.

[Krelbit]

I’m pretty disappointed with how this has all played out. I have absolutely no issues with Zeal, but we’re now in a position where a vendor owns the site, which completely goes against the conflict of interest policies we’ve been operating under. I just really don’t understand why the mod team couldn’t be included in this in any capacity, I’m sure we could have found some alternate solutions to weigh in addition...

You've been great to quote today. Read my mind.

Bad situation all around, but I'm glad that Zeal is actually aware of what happens on the site, so I do look forward to seeing things improve.

I agree with all this. I'm very uncomfortable with a vendor owning the site, but it's done now so let's just hope this place doesn't lose it's magic.

While it’s still early stages, I’ve been talking to zeal and if things go well we will be working together to build a new modern purpose built geekhack. This is something I have been interested in doing for a while and started planning a month ago or something like that, so when I saw this thread it seemed like kismet.

It’s still super early. But my goal is to build a platform from scratch with support for modern browsers and Mobile devices. With proper search and such. I want interest checks and keyboards and group buys to be actual functional entities instead of just threads. They will still have comments and such, but I want them to actually have properties like prices and start and end dates and be searchable and filterable. So if you want to see all group buys ending this week, you just search “group buys ending this week”, the search engine supports contextual lookup, and since each GB has an actual end date, your search result would be just that. If you click on TGR, the TGR page could list all the TGR boards. Any TGR buys and ICs. Etc. I also want to support watchlists and smart notifications. If you want a LZ board, set a watch for LZ ICs, GBs and Classifieds, then get notifications (email, sms, possibly apps, etc).

We also discussed content management and our current plan is to continue with community moderation. Neither one of us has much interest in moderating the site ourselves, and it just makes avoiding any impropriety easier and helps make people more comfortable. My current though is we come up with some sort of rules/community bylaws and all agree to follow them. But there will need to be lots of feedback to get to the right destination.

This is only a small part of the complete idea, but I truly think we can make a better and more inclusive community site for everyone. In the short term I will work with zeal on updating and stabilizing the site. I expect it will be at least a few months of work before I’ve got a working platform and I’m ready to start a closed beta, but one of the things I want to commit to is ensuring continuity of all the existing data. I will likely setup an archive version of the old site as well, but my actual intention will be to migrate all legacy content into the new site to take advantage of all the new features like real search.

I also want to say I absolutely understand everyone’s concerns, but I just want to be clear, my goal start to finish is to make a better site for the community to help it grow and make everyone’s lives easier. I also do believe some form of minor monetization is important, because i would very much like to have servers in multiple regions to maximize perf and availability. And i think the site should be self sustaining and not worry about shutting down month to month. But more importantly I would love to find a way to set aside some funds to sponsor events, maybe a full scale keyboard convention, or run events like a prototype contest where people compete to design keyboards and then we buy prototypes for the winners. I’d also love to have money available to help get more buys to moq. Now this is all my personal opinions and zeal might not agree with everything. If I make profit, that is what I plan to use it for. If there is no good way to do it, then I’ll let that part of my dream die.

That said, I am also completely cognizant that I am designing a site for everyone, not just myself. I absolutely want peoples feedback on what they want and don’t want. I think we can find a balance to make the best site for everyone. Please tell me your ideas and concerns. I’d like to do my best to consider and address as many of them as I can.

TLDR MAKE GEEKHACK GREAT AGAIN

ZEAL 2018

[dead_pixel_design]

It’s still super early. But my goal is to build a platform from scratch with support for modern browsers and Mobile devices. With proper search and such. I want interest checks and keyboards and group buys to be actual functional entities instead of just threads. They will still have comments and such, but I want them to actually have properties like prices and start and end dates and be searchable and filterable. So if you want to see all group buys ending this week, you just search “group buys ending this week”, the search engine supports contextual lookup, and since each GB has an actual end date, your search result would be just that. If you click on TGR, the TGR page could list all the TGR boards. Any TGR buys and ICs. Etc. I also want to support watchlists and smart notifications. If you want a LZ board, set a watch for LZ ICs, GBs and Classifieds, then get notifications (email, sms, possibly apps, etc).

We also discussed content management and our current plan is to continue with community moderation. Neither one of us has much interest in moderating the site ourselves, and it just makes avoiding any impropriety easier and helps make people more comfortable. My current though is we come up with some sort of rules/community bylaws and all agree to follow them. But there will need to be lots of feedback to get to the right destination.

This is only a small part of the complete idea, but I truly think we can make a better and more inclusive community site for everyone. In the short term I will work with zeal on updating and stabilizing the site. I expect it will be at least a few months of work before I’ve got a working platform and I’m ready to start a closed beta, but one of the things I want to commit to is ensuring continuity of all the existing data. I will likely setup an archive version of the old site as well, but my actual intention will be to migrate all legacy content into the new site to take advantage of all the new features like real search.

If you can pull even a fraction of this off I am all for it. I don't use Add-Blocker and I will happily generate revenue for you guys.

[SeedyOne]

I’m pretty disappointed with how this has all played out. I have absolutely no issues with Zeal, but we’re now in a position where a vendor owns the site, which completely goes against the conflict of interest policies we’ve been operating under. I just really don’t understand why the mod team couldn’t be included in this in any capacity, I’m sure we could have found some alternate solutions to weigh in addition...

You've been great to quote today. Read my mind.

Bad situation all around, but I'm glad that Zeal is actually aware of what happens on the site, so I do look forward to seeing things improve.

I agree with all this. I'm very uncomfortable with a vendor owning the site, but it's done now so let's just hope this place doesn't lose it's magic.

While it’s still early stages, I’ve been talking to zeal and if things go well we will be working together to build a new modern purpose built geekhack. This is something I have been interested in doing for a while and started planning a month ago or something like that, so when I saw this thread it seemed like kismet.

It’s still super early. But my goal is to build a platform from scratch with support for modern browsers and Mobile devices. With proper search and such. I want interest checks and keyboards and group buys to be actual functional entities instead of just threads. They will still have comments and such, but I want them to actually have properties like prices and start and end dates and be searchable and filterable. So if you want to see all group buys ending this week, you just search “group buys ending this week”, the search engine supports contextual lookup, and since each GB has an actual end date, your search result would be just that. If you click on TGR, the TGR page could list all the TGR boards. Any TGR buys and ICs. Etc. I also want to support watchlists and smart notifications. If you want a LZ board, set a watch for LZ ICs, GBs and Classifieds, then get notifications (email, sms, possibly apps, etc).

We also discussed content management and our current plan is to continue with community moderation. Neither one of us has much interest in moderating the site ourselves, and it just makes avoiding any impropriety easier and helps make people more comfortable. My current though is we come up with some sort of rules/community bylaws and all agree to follow them. But there will need to be lots of feedback to get to the right destination.

This is only a small part of the complete idea, but I truly think we can make a better and more inclusive community site for everyone. In the short term I will work with zeal on updating and stabilizing the site. I expect it will be at least a few months of work before I’ve got a working platform and I’m ready to start a closed beta, but one of the things I want to commit to is ensuring continuity of all the existing data. I will likely setup an archive version of the old site as well, but my actual intention will be to migrate all legacy content into the new site to take advantage of all the new features like real search.

I also want to say I absolutely understand everyone’s concerns, but I just want to be clear, my goal start to finish is to make a better site for the community to help it grow and make everyone’s lives easier. I also do believe some form of minor monetization is important, because i would very much like to have servers in multiple regions to maximize perf and availability. And i think the site should be self sustaining and not worry about shutting down month to month. But more importantly I would love to find a way to set aside some funds to sponsor events, maybe a full scale keyboard convention, or run events like a prototype contest where people compete to design keyboards and then we buy prototypes for the winners. I’d also love to have money available to help get more buys to moq. Now this is all my personal opinions and zeal might not agree with everything. If I make profit, that is what I plan to use it for. If there is no good way to do it, then I’ll let that part of my dream die.

That said, I am also completely cognizant that I am designing a site for everyone, not just myself. I absolutely want peoples feedback on what they want and don’t want. I think we can find a balance to make the best site for everyone. Please tell me your ideas and concerns. I’d like to do my best to consider and address as many of them as I can.

That's one hell of an information drop. Regardless of opinions on how this all is going down, I'm sure we all appreciate you sharing it. Best of luck! 

[shantanujoshi]

 

[NAV]

Anyone else stop to think that this **** seems so incredibly forced?

No mod involvement
Rapid sale within a day
Zeal instantly buys it
Amnesia reveals some master game plan that's somehow been formulated in the last 3 hours.

I'm skeptical as **** about all of this, it's shady as hell. I support iMav in his decision to sell, as nobody should have to shoulder that $300 cost to run the site by themselves. But this ****? This is so shady.

At the end of the day, it's iMav's site and he can choose to sell it how he pleases, but I'm not really convinced this wasn't some grand plan.

[Belfong]

Whatever platform you are choosing, be sure that it is able to support the "thousands of people start posting at 3pm EST" during a Clack / Bro Caps sale.. because if your platform can't do this, then, it's the wrong platform for Geekhack.

And please, don't turn it into Reddit like! omg!

[Siegx]

Monetized or not, I believe Zeal shares the goal to maintain and expand the community, seeing how his livelihood is in direct dependency of it. I do hope, however, that he's able to keep his business interests separate and keep the GH marketplace fair and neutral between all vendors.

[shantanujoshi]

Anyone else stop to think that this **** seems so incredibly forced?

No mod involvement
Rapid sale within a day
Zeal instantly buys it
Amnesia reveals some master game plan that's somehow been formulated in the last 3 hours.

I'm skeptical as **** about all of this, it's shady as hell. I support iMav in his decision to sell, as nobody should have to shoulder that $300 cost to run the site by themselves. But this ****? This is so shady.

At the end of the day, it's iMav's site and he can choose to sell it how he pleases, but I'm not really convinced this wasn't some grand plan.

I'm interested in buying it. Would love to make this something the community would enjoy that isn't just a reddit cluster **** or monetization play.

[Vigrith]

Accurate.

[superdoedoe]

Anyone else stop to think that this **** seems so incredibly forced?

No mod involvement
Rapid sale within a day
Zeal instantly buys it
Amnesia reveals some master game plan that's somehow been formulated in the last 3 hours.

I'm skeptical as **** about all of this, it's shady as hell. I support iMav in his decision to sell, as nobody should have to shoulder that $300 cost to run the site by themselves. But this ****? This is so shady.

At the end of the day, it's iMav's site and he can choose to sell it how he pleases, but I'm not really convinced this wasn't some grand plan.

Amnesia's been working on this master plan of his for months by this stage. So it's nothing new.

[amnesia0287]

Anyone else stop to think that this **** seems so incredibly forced?

No mod involvement
Rapid sale within a day
Zeal instantly buys it
Amnesia reveals some master game plan that's somehow been formulated in the last 3 hours.

I'm skeptical as **** about all of this, it's shady as hell. I support iMav in his decision to sell, as nobody should have to shoulder that $300 cost to run the site by themselves. But this ****? This is so shady.

At the end of the day, it's iMav's site and he can choose to sell it how he pleases, but I'm not really convinced this wasn't some grand plan.

Amnesia's been working on this master plan of his for months by this stage. So it's nothing new.

To be clear. I have been planing my own site for a while. Cause I think it’s needed. This seemed like a great chance to partner and make something better for everyone and make adoption smoother.

You are welcome to be paranoid. But I am already a successful full time developer. This is something I want to do. Not some get rich quick scheme.

I love keyboards. I believe my current count is 19 and growing.

I want more sets. More boards. More people. That is my goal. If you want to see ulterior motives. I can’t stop you, but that’s not me. Your paranoia is not unfounded. I get that. But at least give us a chance.

[xondat]

Anyone else stop to think that this **** seems so incredibly forced?

No mod involvement
Rapid sale within a day
Zeal instantly buys it
Amnesia reveals some master game plan that's somehow been formulated in the last 3 hours.

I'm skeptical as **** about all of this, it's shady as hell. I support iMav in his decision to sell, as nobody should have to shoulder that $300 cost to run the site by themselves. But this ****? This is so shady.

At the end of the day, it's iMav's site and he can choose to sell it how he pleases, but I'm not really convinced this wasn't some grand plan.

First two parts are shady as **** to me.

I think Zeal just wants to make sure the community is safe. And Amnesia has explained himself.

[gorbachev]

I don't know your traffic numbers, but you should be able to cover several months (couple of years?) worth of costs with a simple sponsorship model without actually having to relinquish the ownership to anyone.

Any keyboard vendor/manufacturer that has big product launches coming up spend WAY more than that for marketing. Given geekhack's prominence in the community, I would think sponsorship on your site would fetch a pretty nice premium.

[HotRoderX]

Anyone else stop to think that this **** seems so incredibly forced?

No mod involvement
Rapid sale within a day
Zeal instantly buys it
Amnesia reveals some master game plan that's somehow been formulated in the last 3 hours.

I'm skeptical as **** about all of this, it's shady as hell. I support iMav in his decision to sell, as nobody should have to shoulder that $300 cost to run the site by themselves. But this ****? This is so shady.

At the end of the day, it's iMav's site and he can choose to sell it how he pleases, but I'm not really convinced this wasn't some grand plan.

to be blunt honest this is the way things look to me. Perhaps playing a bit of devil advocate

No mod involvement: Mods are amazing they do a great service to the community. Bottom line is this.. the mods aren't required to help pay for the servers. CEO goes to sell a company he doesn't ask the mangers what they think. IMav was the CEO of Geek Hack he was paying for it totally out of pocket.

Rapid sale within a day. We don't know whats going on. Perhaps IMav had bills come due. Perhaps he about to lose his house are needs medical attention. We don't know all we can do is assume it wasn't something he decided on during a whim but either something that was forced on to him, are something he has given a lot of thought to. This has been his baby for years. I am sure giving it up on a whim isn't a thing. Know what if it was on a whim which doubt! Then the community is better off as a whole.

Zeal instantly buys it: Zeal's not a idiot Zeal's a savvy business man. He not going to do anything to upset a small community who is his bread and butter. Anything this was a power play to gainer more support from said community. I know personally I will be looking at Zeal switches a lot harder for my next build. This has fostered a lot of good well least in my book.

Amnesia reveals some master game plan that's somehow been formulated in the last 3 hours: This parts been explained. Sounds like this was for the best otherwise the community might have been split up. Perhaps now the community can stay in one place and we can get some upgrades.

[noisyturtle]

well if GH does change for the worse at least it'll be fun to help burn it down while it's on fire

we love a good fire sale around here

[Vigrith]

Amnesia reveals some master game plan that's somehow been formulated in the last 3 hours: This parts been explained. Sounds like this was for the best otherwise the community might have been split up. Perhaps now the community can stay in one place and we can get some upgrades.

This part's questionable to me. I'm all for positive change and change for the better, I'm just not entirely sure how ethical (or productive) it would be to build your own dreamland which you've been working on for x amount of time on someone else's turf. Saying "it's for the best" is a little drastic in my opinion, seems entirely too early to tell what exactly Amnesia's plan actually is, how it'd work and how that would affect existing platforms and communities.

[Sifo]

finally the keyboard lounge's time to shine

[amnesia0287]

Amnesia reveals some master game plan that's somehow been formulated in the last 3 hours: This parts been explained. Sounds like this was for the best otherwise the community might have been split up. Perhaps now the community can stay in one place and we can get some upgrades.

This part's questionable to me. I'm all for positive change and change for the better, I'm just not entirely sure how ethical (or productive) it would be to build your own dreamland which you've been working on for x amount of time on someone else's turf. Saying "it's for the best" is a little drastic in my opinion, seems entirely too early to tell what exactly Amnesia's plan actually is, how it'd work and how that would affect existing platforms and communities.

I’m not quite sure what you mean. I want to make a better keyboard site. So when I saw it was bought by zeal, I figure would be reasonable and someone I could work with. So why not reach out and see if he is interested in a partnership.

I was not working on geekhack 2. I am currently designing database schemas and the backend. Still a ways to go to actually have a functional site, but I actually bought the domain keyboard.exchange to use. This is all searchable in the kb-kustoms channel on discord.

Since zeal was interested, and this site already is the one the community uses. Why not work together instead of both of us working for the same goals. I build enterprise distributed systems for a living. I was never worried about my idea succeeding because I am actually quite confident. But why kill your opponent when you can make them your ally instead?

I just want to make everything more streamlined and usable.

[fanpeople]

Tp for mod 2018.

[iamtootallforthis]

I'm all for tweaks but I don't want to see a full overhaul

[amnesia0287]

I'm all for tweaks but I don't want to see a full overhaul

I'm not quite sure what the issue is with a complete overhaul if the content is migrated. There is only so much that can be done with SMF and it will not support the features I would like to. I totally get change can be painful, but there is no good way to "fix" this site. In my line of work we refer to the problem of this site as "Technical Debt" and the amount of technical debt this site possess is far to much to use it as the foundation for a more complete platform. It literally would take 2-3x as long at MINIMUM to even start building the site I want to through SMF.

I have no intention of removing content, or killing features, so I am kind of curious what your concern is. I could literally build the site to be 100% identical to GH on the front end and fully modern on the back-end if i needed to, to the point that you would literally be unable to tell I changed anything. I don't really see the value of that though. What part of SMF do you think is worth saving?

[fendent]

I don't get this whole paranoia thing, nav. If Zeal and iMav had been working secretly behind the scenes what difference would it make if one day we woke up with a purple themed GH and iMav waving goodbye? What do you propose benefits anybody by making this such a public ruse?

To amnesia's goals though: I too work in software. What you're proposing is lofty as all hell. How long do you think something like this would take? Are you willing to shoulder resolution of tickets when critical functionality breaks? There's a reason people pick mature software for high load websites. Because when your site starts going down or loading slowly, that hit counter starts ticking down and you lose members permanently. It's a reason why radical shifts are not to be undertaken lightly.

Upgrading to a more modern/feature-rich threaded forum software should be in the cards, certainly. Augment that and grow from there so you're not having to reroll core functionality for solved problems.

[amnesia0287]

To amnesia's goals though: I too work in software. What you're proposing is lofty as all hell. How long do you think something like this would take? Are you willing to shoulder resolution of tickets when critical functionality breaks? There's a reason people pick mature software for high load websites. Because when your site starts going down or loading slowly, that hit counter starts ticking down and you lose members permanently. It's a reason why radical shifts are not to be undertaken lightly.

Upgrading to a more modern/feature-rich threaded forum software should be in the cards, certainly. Augment that and grow from there so you're not having to reroll core functionality for solved problems.

It absolutely is ambitious, but I work exclusively on enterprise systems that CAN'T fail or we lose mountains of money. I am not building a single box website, I am building a distributed highly redundant and highly available website, and yes, I am totally open to being on call. Let's not act like the current version of Geek Hack never experiences downtime. I am EXTREMELY confident I can achieve my goals and produce a site that will be fast and MORE reliable than the current iteration. I also have several coworkers who are also willing to work with me to help build and manage the platform. Being on call is nothing new or unusual to me. If something isn't 5-9s, it's not reliable enough.

All "modern" threaded forum software is bloatware to the nth degree.

And regardless, if my site isn't good and stable or people don't like it, it's not as if we can't kill it and just use some random ****ty forum software, but why? Most of the things people ACTUALLY use GH for are not core forum functions. Why not make something that focuses on the way people use the site and then build the discussions around them?

There is nothing particularly complex about a forum. What type of problems are you worried about that would relate to the forum functionality?

I just think you should at least give it a shot and see what I make before you dismiss it from the get-go.

[dead_pixel_design]

I look forward to Amnesia's proposed upgrades. GeekHack is one of the ****tiest platforms I use, it desperately needs overhauling and some of it's issues are systemic, not something that can be fixed, something that needs to be changed on a core, fundamental level. Starting over from scratch would be greatly preferable to tacking on half-fixes and extra crap.

[Belfong]

The new forum discussion should be spawned off as another topic. I just want to know if Zeal is our new Overlord or not?


Sent from iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[fendent]

To amnesia's goals though: I too work in software. What you're proposing is lofty as all hell. How long do you think something like this would take? Are you willing to shoulder resolution of tickets when critical functionality breaks? There's a reason people pick mature software for high load websites. Because when your site starts going down or loading slowly, that hit counter starts ticking down and you lose members permanently. It's a reason why radical shifts are not to be undertaken lightly.

Upgrading to a more modern/feature-rich threaded forum software should be in the cards, certainly. Augment that and grow from there so you're not having to reroll core functionality for solved problems.

It absolutely is ambitious, but I work exclusively on enterprise systems that CAN'T fail or we lose mountains of money. I am not building a single box website, I am building a distributed highly redundant and highly available website, and yes, I am totally open to being on call. Let's not act like the current version of Geek Hack never experiences downtime. I am EXTREMELY confident I can achieve my goals and produce a site that will be fast and MORE reliable than the current iteration. I also have several coworkers who are also willing to work with me to help build and manage the platform. Being on call is nothing new or unusual to me. If something isn't 5-9s, it's not reliable enough.

All "modern" threaded forum software is bloatware to the nth degree.

And regardless, if my site isn't good and stable or people don't like it, it's not as if we can't kill it and just use some random ****ty forum software, but why? Most of the things people ACTUALLY use GH for are not core forum functions. Why not make something that focuses on the way people use the site and then build the discussions around them?

There is nothing particularly complex about a forum. What type of problems are you worried about that would relate to the forum functionality?

I just think you should at least give it a shot and see what I make before you dismiss it from the get-go.

I wouldn’t say I’m dismissing it. But I have been involved in many ambitious, well-meaning “community projects” that have gone south either through ill-preparation or an overly-positive outlook of the required resources it would take to maintain after launch (if they ever got to that point).

Mostly my hope would be that the ability to maintain, patch, and manage such a system could be spread across multiple people for the sake of the hit-by-a-bus factor.

Also, don’t discount that, simply put, new things are not comfortable for people. This community, while may be better served by tailor-built functionality, is very much used to the way things are done here. You rock the boat too much and you’re in danger of tipping it over. I’d worry about GH basically being turned into Massdrop’s talk section, ya know? Just cause some things are less efficient or require shoehorning of process doesn’t mean they’re bad.

Again, not putting down what you’ve had in mind, but simply try to note that building software that is the platform of a community with longstanding roots has a lot of factors that aren’t well represented in other software modalities. Let’s be intentional while keeping some of these things in mind.


Edit: to be clear, i agree on every point about every forum software being bloated lol

[mstarr]

So there is suddenly a quick sale of a website and a vendor just happens to have a fully formed business plan on how to take it over.  No input from moderators either.  This is the death of GH and y'all are cheering for it.  Please submit your group buy fees to zeal now and transfer all copyright of How-Tos and guides.


Whatever the **** this dude is planning it is to make money off this website.  He already does it by bring a vendor.  He wants to profit, not share cool input hardware.

[noisyturtle]

I think many of us are wary about advertisements, outside interests, and data collection.  As we all should be in this age.

This is a tech-savvy oriented site, and the architecture is arcane despite most of our backgrounds. Sure it works, but it could also be better no doubt.

But if the cost of that means this site going commercial it defeats the very nature of GH being a free platform for sharing and creating amongst a close-knit community.

[NAV]

I don't get this whole paranoia thing, nav. If Zeal and iMav had been working secretly behind the scenes what difference would it make if one day we woke up with a purple themed GH and iMav waving goodbye? What do you propose benefits anybody by making this such a public ruse?

My "paranoia" as many people have put it is simply a concern that this move is being done in a relatively hurried, secretive manner. I'm not attempting to imply that Zeal is unfit to host GH. Without prior knowledge of how long Amnesia has been planning his own site, that coupled with the rapid decision making made the entire situation seem extremely fishy.

At the end of the day, as I said before, it's iMav's site and he can do with it as he pleases. My concern is rooted in the fact that there have been a great multitude of community members who have offered to step up and either host it themselves, or form a community leadership that hosts the site. I am a firm believer that this 'sale' is entirely too rushed, and warrants a good discussion involving key members of the community and the moderation team, who have put their own time and effort into making sure GH stays GH. A FCFS sale is disingenuous and disheartening to see, and it's my opinion that the decision was made far too quickly.

Regarding my comments towards Amnesia's plans: I made the mistake of employing sarcasm during that last point, but further comments have all but solidified my concerns. It was meant to imply that there has been a lot of planning behind the scenes, and that this transfer is in part to make that plan realized. The immediate decision to implement Amnesia's game plan:

"While it’s still early stages, I’ve been talking to zeal and if things go well we will be working together to build a new modern purpose built geekhack."

is questionable, and becomes even more questionable in the grand scheme of things, when you look at how this GH acquisition is taking place.

Who knows, I might be completely off base and that things just happened to fall in place absolutely perfectly, but right now I'm going to maintain some skepticism regarding this whole thing.

[amnesia0287]

To amnesia's goals though: I too work in software. What you're proposing is lofty as all hell. How long do you think something like this would take? Are you willing to shoulder resolution of tickets when critical functionality breaks? There's a reason people pick mature software for high load websites. Because when your site starts going down or loading slowly, that hit counter starts ticking down and you lose members permanently. It's a reason why radical shifts are not to be undertaken lightly.

Upgrading to a more modern/feature-rich threaded forum software should be in the cards, certainly. Augment that and grow from there so you're not having to reroll core functionality for solved problems.

It absolutely is ambitious, but I work exclusively on enterprise systems that CAN'T fail or we lose mountains of money. I am not building a single box website, I am building a distributed highly redundant and highly available website, and yes, I am totally open to being on call. Let's not act like the current version of Geek Hack never experiences downtime. I am EXTREMELY confident I can achieve my goals and produce a site that will be fast and MORE reliable than the current iteration. I also have several coworkers who are also willing to work with me to help build and manage the platform. Being on call is nothing new or unusual to me. If something isn't 5-9s, it's not reliable enough.

All "modern" threaded forum software is bloatware to the nth degree.

And regardless, if my site isn't good and stable or people don't like it, it's not as if we can't kill it and just use some random ****ty forum software, but why? Most of the things people ACTUALLY use GH for are not core forum functions. Why not make something that focuses on the way people use the site and then build the discussions around them?

There is nothing particularly complex about a forum. What type of problems are you worried about that would relate to the forum functionality?

I just think you should at least give it a shot and see what I make before you dismiss it from the get-go.

I wouldn’t say I’m dismissing it. But I have been involved in many ambitious, well-meaning “community projects” that have gone south either through ill-preparation or an overly-positive outlook of the required resources it would take to maintain after launch (if they ever got to that point).

Mostly my hope would be that the ability to maintain, patch, and manage such a system could be spread across multiple people for the sake of the hit-by-a-bus factor.

Also, don’t discount that, simply put, new things are not comfortable for people. This community, while may be better served by tailor-built functionality, is very much used to the way things are done here. You rock the boat too much and you’re in danger of tipping it over. I’d worry about GH basically being turned into Massdrop’s talk section, ya know? Just cause some things are less efficient or require shoehorning of process doesn’t mean they’re bad.

Again, not putting down what you’ve had in mind, but simply try to note that building software that is the platform of a community with longstanding roots has a lot of factors that aren’t well represented in other software modalities. Let’s be intentional while keeping some of these things in mind.


Edit: to be clear, i agree on every point about every forum software being bloated lol

Oh I totally wanna make sure it’s well documented and such. To be honest, once it’s up and running, I’m open to making it open source if zeal is. And either way, once I’m further along I’m open to engaging more people on the backend as well.

I just am not comfortable with being open source to start since I need to get a core built and get the site up and reliable. And I’d worry about someone stealing it and beating me to the punch. But I’m totally down to let people help develop the platform if they want to and we can figure out the right way to go about it and pick a good license model.

Also to keep in mind, the reason massdrop is bad is because massdrop is in fact customized box software lol.

I don’t imagine most people actually realize that tho lol.

I plan to do several rounds of betas and usability testing before I open it up to the masses. But my goal is a more intuitive easier to use site that is MORE accessible to the masses. You talk about all the users of the site, but ignore all the people who refuse to use it because it’s an antiquated forum platform. Keeping things the same because it keeps people comfortable is just an odd way to move forward. People were used to horses until those evil mechanized carriages came along.

I’m also not going to reengineer everything. I’ll probably find a good prebuilt text editor for example. Complex JS like that is hard and there is little benefit to doing it myself. Or for the automated graphing for GBs for example, I’ll use an existing graph library like chart.js or tao.

One of the main reasons I want to avoid box software is I plan to build on nosql and I really don’t feel like maintaining a sql database and a nosql database just to support a platform that is 90% functionality I won’t use.

I’m investigating all the options in google and aws as well, but I’m leaning heavily towards something like Cosmos DB so I can just let azure manage region replication and synchronization and can scale up as needed.

I also just hate sql (though I may still end up using it if it better fits my design once I have more of the schema designed).

As to build and patch. I will build everything to be easily redeployable and rebuildable. There will likely also be a staging environment. That I can fork a small amount of traffic to for build validation before it goes wide. I firmly believe in repeatable deployments and a good build and deployment pipeline.

I’m designing for enterprise scale.

[hansichen]

I vote Necromanx


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

i think zeal has a better knowledge of how the site/community works

Especially on how to make as much money as possible out of a community. Not sure if people really want such a sellout here.

[HotRoderX]

Just wanted to say some of the people and there entitlement is becoming a bit extreme. I get it when you invested into a website you grow emotionally attached but! Remember pull your selfs back a bit. Conspiracy theory stuff is stupid. Whats fishy about anything he has done? He owns the website he owes no one anything. He never gotten any monitory gain from the sight other then donations. Which are donations not stock shares. I mean he could have just closed geekhack. He could have sold geekhack with out saying a word. He could have given the sight away to a bunch of people that wanted to turn it into a razor enthusiast sight.

My point is he really didn't have to keep the sight going or explain he was selling it. This is really kinda stupid and most likely why he gone dark. The more he say's the more people will come out of the wood works to manipulate his every word to fit there idea of what went down. The website will either live or it will die. Personally I think it will live on and strive.

There was nothing fishy dude wanted to sell something he owned. The way some people are acting.. I could just see if someone called them out on mechmarket saying it was fishy how they sold there keyboard. There property so quickly and for such a amount and to XYZ blah blah.

[amnesia0287]

I think many of us are wary about advertisements, outside interests, and data collection.  As we all should be in this age.

This is a tech-savvy oriented site, and the architecture is arcane despite most of our backgrounds. Sure it works, but it could also be better no doubt.

But if the cost of that means this site going commercial it defeats the very nature of GH being a free platform for sharing and creating amongst a close-knit community.

And this is why one of my pending projects is to learn GDPR. But I can already say there will be multiple layers of encryption. You will be able to see and choose how your data is used. You will have privacy options and you will be able to remove you data at any time should you choose.

I also reject the notion that a commercial platform can not be good for community. Twitch is a commercial platform. Discord is a commercial platform.

The platform will still be free, and it will still be managed by the community. There may be specific new enhancements and features that end up being premium, but we have no intention of handicapping users who don’t want them. Or taking away core functionality.

We are considering many models in regard to monetization, I’m sure we can find one where most everyone is happy and the site can run without concern for staying up or zeal or me going out of pocket monthly to keep it up.

My initial budget for my own site was going to be around 500 a month to start.

[KHAANNN]

I think iMav is truly a kind soul

Edit: I feel bad on so many fronts, personally paying $300/month to maintain a product only I use, I can't imagine how hard it was not to monetise Geekhack with ads, having to sell for $15k, I'm sure like many, I'd love to buy too, $300/month is really nothing for something so majestic, and $15k is an instant buy just for the collectible value, I mean, we are a community with various members who spent $15k+ for keyboards alone, my spending should be around $5k

[Khers]

While I absolutely respect and understand the decision; if GH is sold, I request a killswitch to easily remove an account and all its associated posts from the site. Would be quite tedious to delete every post one by one.

[amnesia0287]

While I absolutely respect and understand the decision; if GH is sold, I request a killswitch to easily remove an account and all its associated posts from the site. Would be quite tedious to delete every post one by one.

Did I not just literally say that?

[Acereconkeys]

While I absolutely respect and understand the decision; if GH is sold, I request a killswitch to easily remove an account and all its associated posts from the site. Would be quite tedious to delete every post one by one.

Please please please have this as your final option. I would absolutely hate to see all the amazing information/resources contained in this forum disappear because of this. That would be horrible for the hobby. There was a lot of learning and trial and error that took place here that would be a real shame to lose. I know I've learned a lot.

[KHAANNN]

While I absolutely respect and understand the decision; if GH is sold, I request a killswitch to easily remove an account and all its associated posts from the site. Would be quite tedious to delete every post one by one.

This kind of response is the new fad these days

------

Thinking about this sale, I wonder whether it was pre-planned and theatricated - if not - the bastards that tried to buy GH for $10k, and further bastardly tried to rush it deserve to be punished, I once sold a product like this when I was young, it's a mistake everyone should do only once

[Fire Brand]

While I absolutely respect and understand the decision; if GH is sold, I request a killswitch to easily remove an account and all its associated posts from the site. Would be quite tedious to delete every post one by one.

Did I not just literally say that?

You ever thought people ain’t actually reading your walls of text

[amnesia0287]

While I absolutely respect and understand the decision; if GH is sold, I request a killswitch to easily remove an account and all its associated posts from the site. Would be quite tedious to delete every post one by one.

Did I not just literally say that?

You ever thought people ain’t actually reading your walls of text

Reading is too hard now?

Fine TLDR: I will follow GDPR requirements of which the right to be forgotten is one.

Is that too many words?

[romeo]

I think people tend to stick with the things they are familiar. Out of all the shiny new features that amnesia mentioned, if the price of that is the site moving toward commercial then I'd say it's not a good deal at least to me. 

[Remsky]

I think people tend to stick with the things they are familiar. Out of all the shiny new features that amnesia mentioned, if the price of that is the site moving toward commercial then I'd say it's not a good deal at least to me.

If the model of the new site is something akin to discord nitro then I see no problem with it

[Giorgio]

I just hope that we don't go the digg way. Or the reddit way. Just think of how many redesign the site has gone through, and none of those have the needed functionalities. When you have threads, you lose collapse, and when you have previews, you lose something else.
Changing things that work is just not very intelligent in my opinion.
I have nothing against zeal, but is it so difficult to raise 15'000 dollars when we spend much more than that on the ugliest of the ugliest group buys??

[joey]

I don't like the idea of a complete redesign, would much rather just leave it pretty much as it is.

[nmur]

I don't like the idea of a complete redesign, would much rather just leave it pretty much as it is.

yeah

surely priority #1 is getting the existing site running for the foreseeable future, as it is

if new and/or improved things are desired, they could be changed iteratively

gh isn't the perfect site by any means, but people are here because of what it is, and what it has been. if people prefer a different format, there are different sites that have already been established (deskthority, subreddits, slacks, discords, etc)

[AndyTC]

100% agree with a complete redesign.

To the people against it; do you actually use GH? It's horribly outdated and lacks tons of functionally that you should expect from any forum made within the last 10 years

It is one of the main reasons that Geekhack has been dying in the last 5years, whilst the hobby has been rapidly growing.
https://i.imgur.com/1ylu5pL.png