geekhack
geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: xuanwumen on Tue, 02 December 2025, 02:53:42
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HI,I'm a keyboard vendor and not sure if i get it right that it seems keyboard discussions are not hot for now.
I had a look at the vendor section and there is almost no new posts.
Is sales post banned here? Or those vendors disappear too ?
Even one moderator is shown last active in months ago..
Where do all the guys go ...
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The keyboard community is somewhat more fragmented nowadays, less so centralized on geekhack and out on social media platforms like Instagram and in community servers on Discord.
I'm not sure how it'd work for vendors, but a lot still post in the Interest Checks (https://geekhack.org/index.php?board=132.0) board and on the Group Buys and Preorders (https://geekhack.org/index.php?board=70.0) board. People seem to keep track of those more closely and will respond with feedback.
There have been a lot of failed and/or no longer active vendors, however, so if you are looking for some of the old faces that used to be around, a lot of them might be long gone.
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I may be wrong, but I think that in recent years keyboards market grew so much, that it is not the saem as it was, 10-15 years ago when we all were drooling over some silly-ass artisan cap, or those first 60% keyboards, having used mostly boards like Realforce, Filco or Cooler Master (my first mech keeb, Quickfire Rapid :) )
Back then you had to re-solder keyboards to change switches, where we practically had only Cherry options - it was mental when someone de-soldered Filco mx reds and mounted greens for example. Or we had group bys for some ****y plastic custom keycaps, like red one with hammer and sickle (I stiil have one). Or those long-ass group buys - I remember I waited for over 2 years for some keycaps from 7-bit GBs on Deskthority, picking up options from really long lists, with multi color options etc
Nowadays you can buy amazingly cheap barebone kits, or all pre-built sets that are already modded, silenced, lubed and hot-swap.
I think that this is what happened - we had it all, we've tried it all, there is no more room for improvements or real inventions. From super-unique hobby to mass-produced mainstream.
Like tears in rain...
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And as mechanical keyboards became more mainstream, keyboard discussions migrated from this niche place to mainstream forums.
You will find more discussions on forums that cater to PC gaming these days: now that all the PC gamers have mechanical keyboards they don't switch to another forum just to talk about them.
I do think that the oldtimers who once built this hobby* do check in here now and then. They won't be visiting every PC gaming site.
Unfortunately, Geekhack also has a problem with spambots. I report several every day, and the mods do a heroic job of removing them, but they keep coming and dilute the quality of the forum.
*: whatever "the hobby" is ...which is different for everyone.
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A classic case of Cory Doctorow's "En****tification"
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HI,I'm a keyboard vendor and not sure if i get it right that it seems keyboard discussions are not hot for now.
I had a look at the vendor section and there is almost no new posts.
Is sales post banned here? Or those vendors disappear too ?
Even one moderator is shown last active in months ago..
Where do all the guys go ...
I used to spend more time here then any other forums. Then my interests moved to something else. I came back a week ago after many years absence.
Like you I was sad to see how dead this once flourishing place has become :-(
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I suspect that most people who entered the hobby got what they wanted from it and moved on. What mostly remains are the real hardcore builders and they don't have a whole lot to talk about anymore, apparently. Or if they do, they talk about it elsewhere (Discord maybe?). I got into this ten years ago because I was fascinated by custom keycaps more than anything else, but now the iconic designers are gone. I guess every hobby has a natural life cycle, and none last forever, especially technology-based ones since technology changes so fast.
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I posed a similar question on reddit, I thought it odd that the entire hobby is about keyboards, yet it seems people don't use said keyboards to talk/type about them nearly as often as one would think. Heck, I actively seek out excuses to test out a new build and frequent general question threads just to put some miles on the keys.
Long story short, most of the respondents on reddit suggested to peruse discord servers and you will find them more active, but I do agree that overall interaction is seemingly low, especially amongst the higher end enthusiasts.
If you wanna talk aula/neo/wooting/RK/ entry level or mass produced boards theres definitely an audience, but the higher the tier of custom/artisan boards you climb the quieter it gets.
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I am just in the market for a keyboard now, but that doesn't mean it's my hobby. I also think that anything that starts as a hobby, becomes a business when you get good at it to the point that other people also want to have the same keyboard as you made for yourself as a hobby.
It seems like the market has expanded a lot in the past decade or so, because previously I had to import one. It's just unfortunate that the market apparently wants a circus on their desktop.
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Activity definitely comes in waves. Things have been quieter lately, but nothing seems to be banned - there are just fewer new builds and vendor posts than before. A lot of the community has moved to Discord and Reddit, so forums aren’t as busy as they used to be. Still a good number of people around, though!
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well i am glad for geekhack, i hate discord and i never got into reddit, so i like it here.
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With the small detail of geekhack not having any moderators (my topic wasn't approved for over a week and perhaps still isn't), a traditional forum (which has typically less AI slop) is indeed better. I also like that the attention span is longer on a traditional forum than on "social" media.
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Still, anything happening that's worth knowing about in the keyboord hobby comes up here on Geekhack.
Discord and Reddit to a lesser extent are indeed a lot busier, but with that comes the price of high levels of noise. Information gets lost in the never-ending scroll and is reposted again and again.
There are some discords from makers that I follow that are not so noisy as the big ones. There you can interact with good, passionate people and that's pretty great for me. So I take the good with the bad in any case.
So to answer your question, Discord is where it's at.
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Discord's business model is just to get a lot of communities and hoarding their data to at some point trigger asking for money in exchange to not delete their community history. I don't understand why anyone would ever want that. In my mind you need to be literally regarded (substitute t for g) to accept that.
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no, selling the user data is much more lucrative, than blackmailing communities for money.
nothing is free. if there is no cost, the actual product is most probably the user..
and before any one says "opensource is free", NO. opensource is not free, you can just choose not to pay.
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Not sure what you consider to be user data, but I think they might sell cookie information of some anonymous identifier, which is _not_ user data.
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Information about which posts you've seen, read and reacted to is still user data, even if they have only a username and IP and not your real name, home address and social security number.
I'm "on" four keyboard-related Discord "servers", but I'm not very active. I find being on Discord not a casual way to hang out and discuss, but a like a chore.
I'd have to wade through lots of messages that I'm not interested in, and the user interface for navigating older messages is very lacking.
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Information about which posts you've seen, read and reacted to is still user data, even if they have only a username and IP and not your real name, home address and social security number.
I'm "on" four keyboard-related Discord "servers", but I'm not very active. I find being on Discord not a casual way to hang out and discuss, but a like a chore.
I'd have to wade through lots of messages that I'm not interested in, and the user interface for navigating older messages is very lacking.
They aren't allowed to share IP addresses.
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everyone is on web chats, discussing their latest mx hackjobs purchase