Geekhack sold to—probably—ZealPC^WMassdrop

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Elrick

03 Jul 2018, 12:06

Bass wrote: Anyways pretty interesting to see the skepticism over here about Zeal being the new owner. I have seen much more positive reactions outside of DT.
Welcome to the REAL world.

This is how things have transformed and if you're scared about any change, then most of you lot here on DT need to clock off from life.

The youngsters have it great, looking forward to new opportunities whilst all of our age group feel comfortable in our decades old philosophy and the desperation of keeping things from ever progressing.

Time to look forward instead of constantly looking backwards ;) .

andrewjoy

03 Jul 2018, 12:19

Its not a case of scared of change. Its a case of experience and understanding human nature, some thing that comes with age.

What you think that a company who is part of this industry is going to bay 1000s of $$$ for a site simply out of the goodness of there heart ?

If they run it ad-free then they will get the investment back in another way, plain and simple, as has been said there are no free lunches you have to pay.

Its like wodan said before, people getting items for review will feel differently about them even if they try not to there will be an unconscious bias there.

Look at the computer tech press, its all intel intel intel. I wonder why when intel sponsor videos send out 10,000 USD processors, they are going to push intel. However when at you look at the numbers and price that a person would pay AMD clearly have the superior product, but all you hear is " oh no AMD is crap for games because you only get 300fps and not 500fps when you run everything at low settings at 720p on your 60 htz display AHHH AHHH dont buy AMD everyone buy intel , more intel more more more, oh and that 5ghtz 28 core CPU is real guys honest , its not a binned 28 core XEON under a chiller honest, please love them , please.

User avatar
Bass

03 Jul 2018, 12:31

Well I will say in regards to this particular subject matter I am pretty neutral since I am much less active on GH than on DT. I have been a member over there for far longer but I have already posted a lot more in my shorter time over on this side. Even though DT is far smaller I feel like this there is much more interesting and stimulating discussions about keyboards over here, vintage or not. I mostly find myself only really visiting GH to learn more about some Group Buys that I feel curious about.

I also don't have a strong opinion on Zeal or his products since I have yet to try any of them myself (and the fact that Novelkeys seems to be offering stuff of more interest to me at cheaper prices). However disregarding everything else mentioned in this thread so far there is honestly something to be said about offering $15k so quickly and so easily. Keep in mind I am not a business owner and am fairly early in my own career, so I cannot personally fathom throwing around that kind of money on a whim. It does make me pause a bit.

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Zeal

03 Jul 2018, 14:04

Well that was interesting.

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Wodan
ISO Advocate

03 Jul 2018, 14:12

Zeal wrote: Well that was interesting.
Still convinced you shouldn't give up from a business point of view :D

The investment is probably going to look like pennies in 3-5 years when you manage GH well.

Not saying that I would be a fan of it :lol:

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Zeal

03 Jul 2018, 14:23

Hey the GH thread is back from the recycle bin.

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webwit
Wild Duck

03 Jul 2018, 14:32

The post the quote links to is gone instead. :lol:
I will but this out there. The first offer of $15k will take it. (regardless of any other offers)
Done
https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=96 ... msg2630962

User avatar
chuckdee

03 Jul 2018, 15:15

andrewjoy wrote:
Bass wrote:
Anyways pretty interesting to see the skepticism over here about Zeal being the new owner. I have seen much more positive reactions outside of DT.
At deaskthority we take pride in being cynical, if you assume the worst then your prepared for it.
chuckdee wrote: A vendor being in control doesn't necessarily mean that it will not be vendor neutral. It's a possibility, but it seems like a lot of Sturm and Drang over something that hasn't come to pass. The fact of the matter is that though it is perceived to be a community site, it really isn't. One person owns it, and in many cases, he has had his own views while the mods have had theirs.
No, but its a potential conflict of interest. As for it being owned by one man, yes it is and DT is also. But moderation on GH and DT are very different. At DT we delete spam and possibly in very rare circumstances step in when things are getting very heated or targeted but that's about it. So your right when you say its up to the mods or owner but that's the case with anything, they are independent of a companies interest. Not saying GH is run more in the interest of an agenda i dont visit that often any more but its clear its more hands on with its moderation and this could be used to push a companies agenda.
As I said, it's a potential conflict of interest. It is also better than the Chinese company, because he could be held accountable more easily- the devil you know and all. I'm not sure that GH is even about don't bite the hand as they're speaking vociferously in light of the possibility, even though iMav is basically shouldering the whole thing on his own.

This seems like it's been a long time coming, and something needs to change. If the "community" will truly step up in this time and come up with the money or a plan, it seems like iMav would be open to it. But there's a definite clock on it, and to my knowledge, all that's happening is talk with no action to back it up. That's more my point than anything else. As I said in another thread, he's brought this up before, and there's been pretty much a ho-hum approach to it, with few doing anything consistently, and I include myself in that group that hasn't really done anything. A one-time donation doesn't really help the community in the long-term.

And that, I think, is the realistic take on this.

User avatar
Belfong

03 Jul 2018, 16:03

He said he has 3 mortgages. Imagine some Chinese offering enough to settle one of the mortgage. It’s a hard offer to refuse. As someone said up thread - go for gold iMav.


Sent from iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

andrewjoy

03 Jul 2018, 16:05

I don't blame iMav not at all. No matter what company buys it, you have to keep your eyes open and look out for things.

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Vigrith

03 Jul 2018, 16:20

Wodan wrote: From a corporate point of view I think purchasing GH and running the site even ad free and with ZERO active influencing might even be the best thing to do. I don't blame companies or people for trying to buy GH because I think it is a very smart business decision. Capitalism gives me a raging hardon and everyone is just trying to play their cards right. In this part of the game we're the cattle and I am telling everyone of be aware of what's going on.
I agree with the entirety of your post, as well as the one you wrote earlier - although I may potentially be playing devil's advocate, I feel like if the extent of the repercussions we (the community) suffer are mild influencing and a mild sense of gratitude, that's really not the worst thing in the world especially considering Zeal already has a large portion of the community wrapped around his finger despite the (arguably?) overpriced tags on the goods he sells, though I know owning a place like Geekhack would multiply that exponentially due to the massive exposure.

People on GH and through some slacks etc I'm in seem to be worried that if a vendor buys the site they'll just overshadow everyone else, having the power to discredit/put down competition as they see fit. I find this entirely deranged, personally, as I firmly believe that from a business stand point they stand to lose a fuck ton more from doing that than they would be to stand to gain if they were to intentionally override competitors due to the nature and size of our hobby. Your comment about the community's sense of owing them for what they've done, or just the visual/subconscious influence of knowing the site they frequent is owned by x or y is far greater and a definite sure-shot to happen, and I'm sure Zeal (and other prospect buyers) is perfectly aware of everything both you and I have written down here.

It really heavily depends on who the Chinese company/entity are and what their intent is, so I guess we hope for the best. What I personally care for with Geekhack is the Interest Check/Group Buy thread dynamic - I care for the fact that there can be threads like DCS Toxic that have been running for like 4 years and that were bumped 2 hours ago with relevant information, I care for the fact that there's an old-school forum structure that greatly benefits discussion during ICs (which is horrendous on reddit for example, imo) facilitating back and forth, etc.

That's what I'm personally wary of losing, and whilst I'm fairly certain that'd not happen if someone like Zeal were to buy it, maybe it won't either if it's the Chinese. The best outcome would be for Mav to give the site to Hoff (or a larger portion of the community) for example and just set up a Patreon - which in my opinion with reasonable/smart marketing and exposure would EASILY pay for the $300 or whatever it is he pays for the outdated and overpriced hosting service - but with 100gs in play at this point, which is what was insinuated, I don't think anyone can fault Mav for "selling out".

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chuckdee

03 Jul 2018, 16:40

I'm skeptical that setting up a Patreon will indeed pay the bills. Are people willing to put their money where their mouth is? How many club members did we have here with the minimal level of monetary investment necessary?

I was member 151 a couple of years ago if that's any indication.
Last edited by chuckdee on 03 Jul 2018, 16:41, edited 1 time in total.

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kekstee

03 Jul 2018, 16:41

andrewjoy wrote: I don't blame iMav not at all. No matter what company buys it, you have to keep your eyes open and look out for things.
Well, given how things went down and how the community had no chance in hell to keep up... it's a pretty shitty deal.
I wonder how the site will be squeezed for money now.

//e Given how easily the offer was raised I wouldn't be surprised if the final offer was a lowball in the eyes of the buyer.
Last edited by kekstee on 03 Jul 2018, 16:43, edited 1 time in total.

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chuckdee

03 Jul 2018, 16:42

kekstee wrote:
andrewjoy wrote: I don't blame iMav not at all. No matter what company buys it, you have to keep your eyes open and look out for things.
Well, given how things went down and how the community had no chance in hell to keep up... it's a pretty shitty deal.
I wonder how the site will be squeezed for money now.
He'd asked for financial support a while ago. Now I think it's grabbing for the brass ring, though. He put the offer out there for 15k and someone matched it. It would seem that he should honor it, even if not under any obligation to do so.

UPDATE: Holy Shit! I take back everything I said above... :shock:

Image

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webwit
Wild Duck

03 Jul 2018, 16:52

Lol verticalscope. A spam company.
chuckdee wrote: I'm skeptical that setting up a Patreon will indeed pay the bills. Are people willing to put their money where their mouth is? How many club members did we have here with the minimal level of monetary investment necessary?

I was member 151 a couple of years ago if that's any indication.
The club may not have worked in other ways, but the money and other donations more than payed the bills. We still have over 2 years of hosting costs and wingnuts covered. I wouldn't use a leech like Patreon, but getting the hosting costs covered shouldn't be a problem for GH.

I can understand he can't let a 40k offer go, but the way this was handled is not so Born Again Christian, iMav... shouldn't play the bidders like that, shouldn't promise that the first offer of 15k gets it, shouldn't have removed that post. Why the sudden hurry, it was sold like he needed his next crack shot. Why not a normal bidding process where one states the site is up to sale, bidders get a chance to prepare their bid, you take a couple of weeks, etc. It would have at least given the community a chance to collaborate on an offer, and would have been respectful to the other bidders.

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AMongoose

03 Jul 2018, 16:55

chuckdee wrote:
kekstee wrote:
andrewjoy wrote: I don't blame iMav not at all. No matter what company buys it, you have to keep your eyes open and look out for things.
Well, given how things went down and how the community had no chance in hell to keep up... it's a pretty shitty deal.
I wonder how the site will be squeezed for money now.
He'd asked for financial support a while ago. Now I think it's grabbing for the brass ring, though. He put the offer out there for 15k and someone matched it. It would seem that he should honor it, even if not under any obligation to do so.

UPDATE: Holy Shit! I take back everything I said above... :shock:

Image
Yeah... it's a bit suspicious how the screen cap suddenly ends.

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chuckdee

03 Jul 2018, 16:57

Why so? It was his last PM to iMav I guess. Never received a response?

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chuckdee

03 Jul 2018, 17:00

webwit wrote: Lol verticalscope. A spam company.
chuckdee wrote: I'm skeptical that setting up a Patreon will indeed pay the bills. Are people willing to put their money where their mouth is? How many club members did we have here with the minimal level of monetary investment necessary?

I was member 151 a couple of years ago if that's any indication.
The club may not have worked in other ways, but the money and other donations more than payed the bills. We still have over 2 years of hosting costs and wingnuts covered. I wouldn't use a leech like Patreon, but getting the hosting costs covered shouldn't be a problem for GH.
Well, that's good to hear at least. You also made it easy to keep up with payments, so that was a bonus. I just forget when its time to renew otherwise, just as I did with GH.

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AMongoose

03 Jul 2018, 17:03

chuckdee wrote: Why so? It was his last PM to iMav I guess. Never received a response?
That doesn't seem likely to me, after all iMav was responding normally and that's a serious question.
I generally don't trust PM screencaps from one side.

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Norman_

03 Jul 2018, 17:06

Man, from my original read of the thread i got the feeling that iMav wasn't making the best decisions.

This really solidifies it.

Like, seriously. A patreon would cover 300/mo without any challenge. Given GHs demographic, most of them probably already have a patreon and are sending out modest amounts of money to twitch titty streamers or youtubers every month. He's just like "I've tried nothing and I'm out of ideas"

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Vigrith

03 Jul 2018, 17:08

chuckdee wrote: I'm skeptical that setting up a Patreon will indeed pay the bills. Are people willing to put their money where their mouth is? How many club members did we have here with the minimal level of monetary investment necessary?

I was member 151 a couple of years ago if that's any indication.
I think it'd work, for Geekhack even with little to no incentive I truly do believe $300 a month would be quite easily doable. Maybe I'm overestimating the community's "generosity" but I think the sheer volume of people that frequent GH, if it were to be properly displayed and marketed so that we're all aware of it, that would make it to the goal by itself. Patreon is incredibly flavour of the month right now, I don't wanna compare the traffic of GH to say, Twitch, but there are really small streamers that are making a good living off of Patreon - just make some bs tiers and incentives like $1 for nothing in return, $5 a month for higher res avatars or gifs or something, $10 for auto-approval of your GB threads (if you're a verified vendor/entity).

Those are things that barely require any work at all, people's will to pay for dumb shit or QoL features is a real thing. Either way, moot point seeing as it cannot compete with 100gs for obvious reasons, but still. I'd actually like to find out, think it'd be an interesting experiment.

PS: as Webwit stated, the use of Patreon itself is questionable - not saying it'd be ethical or desirable, I just meant that theoretically I think it'd be feasible.

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j0d1

03 Jul 2018, 17:08

Don't let yourself be intimidated, iMav. Go for the highest bidder :evilgeek:

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Wodan
ISO Advocate

03 Jul 2018, 17:09

Tbh this deal should _NOT_ be rushed at all. I don't understand the hurry, iMav should really sit down for a moment and see if he can find an independant price estimate for the site/community!

That's what it must feel like putting a Nixie keyboard on ebay for 1$ starting bit. You're totally excited about a 100$ offer and then another dude offers 150$ ...

We all obviously have NO idea of the value of such a community and maybe these are all nasty lowball offers?

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scottc

03 Jul 2018, 17:11

Haha, a spam company! Everyone better quickly delete their PMs with payment info, addresses and other things you thought would be safe!

Looking forward to people seeing google ads for keyboards they spoke about in GH PMs. :lol: :lol:

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Wodan
ISO Advocate

03 Jul 2018, 17:16

scottc wrote: Haha, a spam company! Everyone better quickly delete their PMs with payment info, addresses and other things you thought would be safe!

Looking forward to people seeing google ads for keyboards they spoke about in GH PMs. :lol: :lol:
Oh that would explain the Tranny-Cam ad I was getting on a major newspaper site a while ago!

davkol

03 Jul 2018, 17:28

I've seen tech forums with way smaller outreach (e.g., not in English) sell for the $(15-40)k. I wager that GH is worth more by an order of magnitude.

The downside is that it's extremely risky due to conflict of interest. Sometimes people talk about "mechanical head-pens"… yeah, now tell me about all these major audio forums, where you can't get banned for criticizing a sponsor vendor… or that isn't a big-data farm.

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Dingster

03 Jul 2018, 17:29

Wodan wrote:
scottc wrote: Haha, a spam company! Everyone better quickly delete their PMs with payment info, addresses and other things you thought would be safe!

Looking forward to people seeing google ads for keyboards they spoke about in GH PMs. :lol: :lol:
Oh that would explain the Tranny-Cam ad I was getting on a major newspaper site a while ago!
:|

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webwit
Wild Duck

03 Jul 2018, 17:31

Wodan wrote:
scottc wrote: Haha, a spam company! Everyone better quickly delete their PMs with payment info, addresses and other things you thought would be safe!

Looking forward to people seeing google ads for keyboards they spoke about in GH PMs. :lol: :lol:
Oh that would explain the Tranny-Cam ad I was getting on a major newspaper site a while ago!
https://old.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comme ... ts_online/

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scottc

03 Jul 2018, 17:33

Friendly reminder that we have a Geekhack refugee camp ;) marketplace-f30/

Also I want to nominate this for the DT Ping award. :mrgreen:

davkol

03 Jul 2018, 17:35

Use the hashtag: #dta2018

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