If a "group buy" organizer or leader doesn't consider themselves to be doing much of anything, and rather that they simply click a few buttons on the PMK site, they shouldn't be advertising "their" group buy here at Geekhack. At least not in the IC and GB forums.
This discussion is relevant, because people need to be aware of the type of person they are entrusting to lead their group buy.
I'm just submitting a couple of drawings for free to PMK, so people can buy them if they like, silly kid.
"entrusting to lead their group buy"
WHOAH, CALM DOWN EVERYBODY.
We need Gandhi himself to "lead" a group buy nowadays (read submit a drawing to PMK).
Let's bring this huge leader of the human kind to GH so we can have a keyset going on, and we shall all succeed with pride of our great leader.
^^^
This is from the Cospar IC thread, before MiTo edited his post (emphasis added by me). Clearly he believes he is not leading a group buy, and he's just using GH for free advertising.
To add to this
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This is not the type of person the community should be supporting.
I didn't read the entire Cospar thread, but I did sense some hostility from some GH members towards the guy. And yeah, you're right, according to that quote MiTo doesn't sound willing to endure the self-flagellation and agony that a 'traditional' groupbuy entails. He's just designing the set, and 'pushing some buttons' on the PMK site.
And, uh, how does the community get hurt by this? And by 'community' I don't mean GH specifically, but the keyboard enthusiast community? They don't really. Samwisekoi and matteo have both used the PMK system -- are they sellouts or something? No, they're not sellouts -- I'm guessing that they probably just want to do the 'work' that they
enjoy doing -- designing the keyset. They're not interested in the logistical dogwork like packing, sorting, collecting money, etc. Can you really blame them?
It seems to me that the creative aspect of these sorts of groupbuys is where we really need to focus. I'd rather see someone like sam or matt spend their time designing new stuff, instead of packing boxes. That's better for the community, too.
For some reason, unless the organizer is willing to
suffer for the groupbuy, it's not a groupbuy anymore. If GH bans PMK groupbuys completely, GH becomes less and less of a destination for the 'community'. Instead, we should treat these PMK groupbuys as what they are -- good for the community at large. PMK's system
lowers the barriers to entry for keyboard designers, and that's a good thing. It's bad for elitist snobs, but good for the community.