deskthority

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Vote in this round for a chance at winning a WhiteFox keyboard and GMK Carbon keycap set from Massdrop!

Round 3 rules:
Please direct special attention to this heavyweight "super category." Vote for The Deskthority champion of 2016. The lineup is very strong! What was extra special in 2016? Who should earn earn the Golden Wingnut? This is the final round. See the first round and second round for reference.

The final round ends on Saturday 10 December, 20:00 UTC. You can change your vote until the end of the round by resubmitting the poll. The winner and full results will be released soon after the vote closes.

Official Nominees:

The Model MF team for the Model MF drop-in kit
Model M lovers spent years staring at their keyboards' standard layout, iconic aesthetic, and adequate membrane design. They dreamt, however, of something more. What would a Model M with capacitive buckling springs be like? That dream is now a reality thanks to the fantastic Model MF project, a classic "by us for us" group buy. It provides a drop-in, modernized Model F replacement for Model M and SSK internals. This project is not only a great contender this year, but stands tall among the best hardware projects on Deskthority.


The result of stunning craftsmanship, knowledge, sweat, and strong dedication.

Daniel Beardsmore for his never-ending work on the Deskthority Wiki
If you are a regular Deskthority visitor, Beardsmore needs no introduction. You know why he deserves your vote. If you don't know him, he is the wiki. Every time you visit the wiki via search or link, the page you're seeing is most likely written by Beardsmore. And, if not, he probably set the editing standards or the layout. He is the most dedicated researcher and wiki editor on Deskthority. The legendary first conqueror (and survivor) of the Alps Vortex, this year he didn't rest... In fact, he may have upped his pace!


One out of three of those 35188 edits were by Daniel Beardsmore, and he's probably responsible for an even larger share of the actual content.

Chyros for his YouTube videos and majestic voice
A previous silver Wingnut winner for his excellent, informative, detailed, and funny keyboard review videos, Chyros didn't Gollum over his Wingnut and hide in a cave. Instead, he upped the ante in 2016 by releasing a new review at least once a week! And while the earliest videos were from someone new to keyboard collecting, he's now reached an expert level. Clearly these are the best, most addictive keyboard reviews on the Internet. Will he win gold this time? He certainly deserves it. Did I mention the Voice?
In a world where a man reviews at least one keyboard each week, for one year...

XMIT for bringing back the Hall Effect switch type
Hall Effect keyboards are extraordinarily reliable, with an expected lifetime measured in billions of key presses. Usually reserved for military and aerospace applications, the keyboards weren't marketed to consumers due to their expensive silicon. XMIT, in cooperation with a Chinese manufacturer, managed to bring a full line of affordable Hall Effect keyboards to a wider audience, complete with design changes and optimizations from beta testers and previously obtained knowledge. How cool is that? Top points!
Still playing with your little Cherry or Alps switches, eh? Hall Effect is where it's at!

Ripster55 for spreading his knowledge on reddit
After being BANNED for shenanigans in the early days of the mechanical keyboard renaissance from, more or less, every keyboard forum in the western spiral arm of the Galaxy, Ripster55 didn't rest on his laurels, but triumphed by erecting r/MechanicalKeyboards. It developed into the largest online keyboard collecting community, and it essentially did so overnight. No small feat! Last year he continued to, as the nominator described it, "spread his knowledge on reddit and general shitposting." Ladies and gentlemen: Ripster55! He's craving for the 'nut. Will you comply?


Selfies from his drinking/wearing-a-keyboard-on-your-head period, featuring meme t-shirt, anno 2010. In this period he was also credited for the invention of the least accurate switch actuation measuring method in the world.

Woho. My vote goes to XMIT.

Very strong lineup indeed, everyone here deserves a Golden Wingnut!

webwit wrote: ↑Ladies and gentlemen: Ripster55! He's craving for the 'nut. Will you comply?

[...]

In this period he was also credited for the invention of the least accurate switch actuation measuring method in the world.

Chyros!

Wow, I'm up for three categories in one way or another! Thank you so much everyone! I'm honored to have made it this far.

I had a hard enough time voting for just 5 before, now I need to pick one :B
Good luck to everyone involved!

XMIT for bringing back Hall Effect. Got to check it out at the DC meetup- is awesome.

pavona wrote: ↑XMIT for bringing back Hall Effect. Got to check it out at the DC meetup- is awesome.

Oh neat! Who had one in DC? Was it one of the beta testers? I don't remember anyone being that close to DC, so I'm wondering who made the trip...

Ripster55 for spreading his knowledge on reddit! Building my own custom board as soon as parts show up because of him!

Definitely XMIT and Hall Effect... looks really neat.

webwit wrote: ↑
Selfies from his drinking/wearing-a-keyboard-on-your-head period, featuring meme t-shirt, anno 2010. In this period he was also credited for the invention of the least accurate switch actuation measuring method in the world.

But it was also the cheapest switch acutation measuring method in the world. Some random person with an exostic switch won't have a $1200 force gauge handy, but you can tell him to pile coins on the key and see how long it takes to activate.

My vote goes to Ripster55!

Not voting for ripster, but I admit a perverse joy of anxiousness on the prospect of seeing on reddit the first cutaway photos of the innards of a golden wingnut.

ohaimark wrote: ↑When a category winner is a Deskthority member (except for The *Ping*), he or she will get a special Deskthority Award Clack Factory Wingnut Trophkey!

This excludes banned members, doesn't it?

Voting in this category is too difficult

Don't worry, ripster has plenty of sockpuppets all over the place.

Before Ripster's ego became too much for him he did produce a lot of good info on Geekhack. His posts helped me a lot when I started out in this community back in 2010.

Indeed. OTOH, he was already just flaming and shitposting for the most part back in 2011.

XMIT wrote: ↑
Wow, I'm up for three categories in one way or another!

It seems that this category could kind of dilute the effect of votes cast in the more specific places.

Also, I don't think that Ripster should get his nut on DT. He created his own den for those activities.

These are Open Awards for the entire keyboard community, not only this den, and invitations went out to other communities to participate. Any result will be respected. This includes any category were the subset of the DT community voted differently, that's all in the game. We've had previous winners outside DT.

Yeah, I considered the dilution of the vote. We can't do much when a project fits into multiple categories and wins in those categories, though. "Barring it from one or the other to place it in the other thing" would give too much control to me, The Kingpin. Better to let the community decide, imo.

The point of inviting other forums was extending an olive branch and encouraging cooperation. If ripster wins The Deskthority, he will get The Golden Wingnut. No ifs, ands, or buts.

Starting an entire keyboarding community and managing it in an effective manner (which he seems to be doing) is, frankly, impressive enough to merit a Deskthority.

The Deskthority has changed this year from an award specifically meant to recognize something in our forum to something a bit grander. Now, it's an award that recognizes any community member who does something amazing for the hobby. Even better, it has the full weight of the DT name behind it.

We're basically the Academy Awards of the keyboarding world.

I think it's great if someone wins in a normal category and then also wins the big one as the "best of all categories". 7bit managed it once!

ohaimark wrote: ↑We're basically the Academy Awards of the keyboarding world.

...and here I was thinking that this was just the Daytime Emmy Award of the keyboarding world. Thanks for that clarification.

Oh, I just noticed that the award nomination here is "XMIT for bringing back Hall Effect".

I'd like to note that this thread should also be in the description:
workshop-f7/converting-my-wang-t12379.html

Though still incomplete, I did get pretty far in a general purpose solution for all of our 1960s-1980s vintage Hall effect boards. One is still in the works.

Done.

This is indeed the hardest vote of the lot. If life was fair, quite a few folks in this list would get their own golden wingnut.

But life ain't fair.

While I respect all of the nominees, there is one true resource that transcends all of the keyboard communities. It brought me here to DT from the vintage computer community and is a wealth of information. I, of course, am speaking of the DT Wiki. I've been involved in helping out Daniel Beardsmore in a small way compared to the amount of work he puts into the Wiki and the greater body of knowledge for the keyboard enthusiast community. We lost him for a little and he was missed and I, for one, am glad he's back.

In the spirit of reaching out to Geekhack and /r/MechanicalKeyboards, the DT Wiki is the cumulative body of knowledge for all keyboard enthusiasts and I honestly don't know how he keeps at it. It's not just words he puts in but the research behind it. I've been happy to help but now that I'm not in the running (I never was in comparison), I'll be voting for Daniel and his work.

I nominated Ripster, I'm so sorry he got this far lol. Voted for him anyway, i think he deserves it.

webwit wrote: ↑Last year he continued to, as the nominator described it, "spread his knowledge on reddit and general shitposting."

Ha, you fool. That won't work on me, the video is not available in my country.

Norman_ wrote: ↑I nominated Ripster, I'm so sorry he got this far lol. Voted for him anyway, i think he deserves it.

I owe Ripster a significant debt for my early keyboard knowledge base, but if he was indeed responsible for the r00tw0rm disaster (when, June 2011?) then that is a colossal sin that I could never forgive or forget.

If it was not you (I know that you are reading this) then I apologize, again, for slandering you.