I'm sure I'm beating a dead horse here, but:
What makes someone with more than 1000 followers (or more than 200 posts) more worthy than others to own this board? I can almost see the argument 'Someone with more Geekhack posts would likely be more experienced with customs and thus more able to appreciate the nuance of this custom'. I don't agree with this metric, nor that this makes someone more 'worthy' of a board, but I could at least connect the dots.
But having 1000+ followers doesn't... say anything about experience other than that the person is able to produce good content and possibly build hype. There is no benefit (that I can see) to selling this specific board to enthusiasts with more followers. If the purpose is to ensure exposure and therefore sales, there are only 10 units. It was highly likely that your board was going to be bought. The only thing we could achieve is bloating after-market value, to no advantage to you. If the purpose is only for the hype, hype will build as long as the exclusive board feels somewhat attainable, and at 10 units, hype has very little space to build.
I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve.
Agreed, how does # of Geekhack posts gauge experience? I rarely comment here and only recently started doing so, but have been in the hobby for 2 years now...
Post number (PN) is a good metric to gauge wether a user is active. And that is it. It does not automatically say this is a cashgrab project or this is a good project, but it is in the roster of metrics to determine the fallibility and trust level of a poster, and also the chance a potential GB will go south. For what it's worth I've been in the community as the classical lurker from 2013, and I have keysets from 2013/2014 to prove it, so everything I'm saying also applies to me.
Other good metrics are:
- How the user is viewed in the community
- How many GBs has the user successfuly or not successfuly ran
- Level of interest in this community
- Overall willingness to learn
Specifically for an IC/GB, the most common criteria are
- OP reputation as gauged by the items above
- Familiarity with concepts like keyboard construction, workings and acoustics
- Ability to sum up the inspiration, methodology, intended business model for the product; additionally, in a GB, price, quantity, vendors
- Uniqueness or overall aesthetics of the project, which is kind of subjective but rather easy to evaluate
So let's gauge this IC, shall we? As for user reputation:
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How the user is viewed in the community: he is new, we don't know crap about him, he has 18 freaking posts all "I love it, I like it, beautiful" etc and his account isn't an year old yet
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How many GBs has the user successfuly or not successfuly ran: literally zero
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Level of interest in this community: literally zero, I mean, 10 pieces because I have 1k followers? Also lying?
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Overall willingness to learn: also none, because this keyboard's construction is meh, the PCB renders are meh, the renders are meh, and because I'm feeling meh today
For the IC itself:
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OP reputation as gauged by the items above: doesn't play in his favour I'm afraid
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Familiarity with concepts like keyboard construction, workings and acoustics: cmon, look at that bottom part, is this a keyboard or a freaking puzzle. Also no protos. Also 3D print protos.
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Ability to sum up the inspiration, methodology, intended business model for the product: no price, no inspiration, methodology is shady at least, IC poorly written. I would also bet high dollar this dude will make this a 600+ USD keyboard "because only 10 units", but since this is an IC prices are generally still in the works, we let pass the fact prices are missing. This keyboard is completely un-inspired, as we can see buzzwords gallore (exclusive, double gasket or whatever that means, 6063 aluminum, plate options).
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Uniqueness or overall aesthetics of the project: lol gasket 65% with logo blocker, a freaking JWK linear recolor would be more unique at this point
None of these criteria are absolute. Quantrik was pretty unknown when he made the QXP and the Kyuu and both are fantastic. The Kyuu itself is a 65% with blocker and logo (and gasket IIRC but correct me please) and it is a nice keyboard. Upas doesn't lurk around here so his account is both new and not many posts. Puddsy is a known prick but he knows what he's saying; he's also pretty active (like 12k posts, cmon mate get a life). JWK recolors are all the same yet people buy them because they are objectively good, cheap, they have a nice sound profile (at least the linears). So it's not that a single criteria can invalidade you, but serially and severely missing a bunch of them does make me want to whoop some asses with a newspaper.
This is just a quick analysis. Simon takes tens of minutes sometimes to review a single IC/GB.
All of this to say: this IC bingoes every single bad criteria we have to analyse it, this is nuclear-level don't buy. It's not only about post number or account age.