System76 Open Source Hotswap Mechanical Keyboard

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103

I didn’t read the full thread in detail, just a brief summary.

I can’t speak for the community, but my experience in the hobby (reddit/GH/KT/DT) has been that it has often bordered on circle-jerk. Not the majority of the time, by any means, but frequent enough to realize there is some preference derived elitism / toxicity baked in.

Everybody is on a quest to learn about the hobby and find their preferred input device. It’s not a leap to expect that some of these folks will offer valuable design feedback or criticism, try convince others of their preference / truth, or even, at times, gatekeep. I think you’ve experienced a little bit of all of these.

I feel as though many of the community’s agreed upon best practices are a living, moving target, derived from a mean preference. Some things directly affect marketability (cap compatibility), while others are purely aesthetic (pcb tracing).

That said, I can confidently say that, barring performance based recommendations, none of these things are the truth. They are just our truth. Your board conflicts with several of our truths, and so we admire, comment on, ridicule, and even attack these differences.

I can also confidently say that what the vocal minority that left a bad taste in your mouth is just that; a minority. I think most of us recognize that even a unique design such as yours is a culmination of preference and need, and is perfect for someone. Part of existing in this hobby is respecting the preference of others, right or wrong in your mind.

I hope sticking with the community will yield a different experience for you than this thread.

I’m sure others will beg to differ, this is just my op-ed.

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104

I am not someone who bashes keyboards or their designs since…well someone will always like it.

Now as someone before me has said this forum is the most open, friendly and peaceful, not pretentious place full of enthusiasts of all directions.

I feel very miffed and rather attacked that a whole team of devs from some keyboard drop in here to lambast what was being said with attacky comments, angry that their board was criticized here.

From a company standpoint that behaviour is a rather odd one isnt it? None of the initial comments where bad and still somehow the making devs hot drop in here like we insulted their mother. And yes of course your were called out for this behaviour.

I am very much opposed to how you guys handled this and this sure isnt a good look for you.

Yikes to the lot of the devs.

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105

Tell me one thread with toxicity here?

If you had bad experiences on keebtalk I am sure it could have been solved by talking to a mod

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106

Man look, I hear you… it’s funny to me too, I mean it’s strange… it’s strange to me too, but we’re talking about keyboards man, we’re not even talking about the game… the actual game, when it matters… We’re talking about keyboards …

108

Speaking as an experienced dev here…

I believe the correct reaction from the system76 team would have been to start with letting people know they were sent this thread, thank people for their feedback, and maybe offer to take questions and have a discussion.

Yes, people were being a bit harsh, but that’s why it would have been the classy move and would have made a much better first impression with the community. Defensive anger and name calling is just a recipe for bad PR.

Anyway, I’m not sure this keyboard is a fit for me personally, but I wish system76 the best of luck and hope they find success.

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109

I always use 2U with no stabs. It doesn’t lead to wobble for me, so I can forego stabs on my whole board

110

This is exactly what I thought. My usb hub is one of the least important parts of my setup for that reason. Making it one of the most expensive (and my input device to boot) isnt in the cards for me.

@leviport

Well I wouldn’t go that far, lol. Plenty of people, including myself, love their Ergodoxen deeply. But I think I know what you’re getting at. Upon seeing the Ergodox, people can quickly make a decision about whether it will work for them or not. If not, they just say, “That’s just not for me,” and move on. I guess that’s just the reaction I was hoping for from people who didn’t like the layout, rather than the… everything else.

That is probably what would have happened if someone hadn’t made the ill-advised action of sharing it. The responses made it blow up into something ugly. You’ll see responses to the design of other projects which is just, as said, opinikns, then people will move on. I know under normal circumstances I don’t even take notice of them.

I think there are assumptions all around- hopefully this will die down relatively quickly, but there are a lot of members of the keyboard community with a wide variety of experience- I’d say not to generalize until you get to know the community.

Sorry for the harsh welcome- hopefully things will go better from here, and glad you’re sticking around after this rather bumpy start! And as said, sorry that someone felt the need to share this- it indeed doesn’t make a for a good impression if someone sent it to you as ‘feedback’, so one can understand why you might have come in guns ablazing.

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111

Don’t give advice you don’t intend to follow. I understand getting a little heated, but this is a particularly senseless and condescending thing to say. Or, if you sincerely think that’s sound advice, really work on taking criticism less to heart. The meme crowd dunk on brown switches every day, but they’re still made, sold, used, and enjoyed.

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112

I have posted this to system76 github and definaetily not with bad intentions, but rather to try and close the gap between how the keb community see their product and how system76 see their product.

113

Honestly, not even surprised this happened here. Leave it to peeps anywhere deeper than the outer crust of the community to point fingers and go “don’t like different, thing bad” and devolve into this, and it’s not even that surprising either. Sure, the System76 blokes popped in with their kit flaring, but what’s to be expected when this thread threw a couple hundo domain hits their way centered around saying “keeb bad”. And there’s plenty of peeps here willing to go "but no, Keebtalk is a nice part of the community; Well that’s got about the sway of “well this is the least burnt part of your meal”.
And we all know that goes on, there’s no arguing it, everyone here is exactly aware of how little it takes to start a shit flinging contest over the dinkiest shit; like who’s allowed to use what colors, which rubber domes are the ones we make fun of, which known scammers we still buy stuff from because we care more about material goods than morals, and which layouts we allow “big creators” to systematically cut out support for because they’ve got beef to pick.
And I’m aware I’m not innocent here, I’ve brought a shovel to a shit fight in my time around the community, but I finally figured out I was acting a bit of a twat and followed the golden rule:“If you’ve not anything nice to say, fuck off out of here.”

Things here could have been so much nicer if people had simply gone “not really my piece of kit, but hey another company making boards”. And I’m not absolving @jackpot51 and their 80grit approach to handling the thread, but I’m not putting much blame onto it either.
In case it’s gone unnoticed, I’ve not really had much participation in the community at large as near I used to, and it’s shit like this that just casually happens that reminds me of part of the reason I haven’t. It just seems like once you get down in a bit it’s so easy to fall victim to the hivemind of conflict that flares up in any number of ways and areas here.

For what it’s worth: Do I like the board? No. Do I think it’s a bad board? Also no. I’m just happy we’re continuing to tell Micro USB to fuck off. And don’t get me started on the complaints about that price for a functional and complete board, I’ve seen the memes and degeneracy the community is willing to just throw money at.

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114

I tried, and failed, to capture some of these points as well as you have. I feel like some of the community members are in denial about the reality of our community sometimes.

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115

I have yet to see ANY toxicity on this board. Gladly point it out to me.

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116

The community or this board. I hear a lot of smack talk about the board and havent seen any of that stuff happen here. Reddit? Yeap. Twitter? Yeap. Geekhack…yup.

The only shit flinging was done by the Devs here. And I love to see yall come out of the woodworks and suddenly go off on a board you are members on for…what exactly?

Someone said they dont like the board. Thats it. people cant always like stuff that is being made. So what? If you cant handle that shit as a company then dont open these forums and ignore or have a proper discussion without pissing contests.

Thats how you company.

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118

I agree, keebtalk is one of the least toxic forums. And yet, you’re in the right place. This thread reads like a roast of a keyboard.

In the first 45 comments (before it’s sent to jackpot) we laugh at / disparage:

  • the layout
  • the routing
  • the mounting system
  • the caps
  • the USB ports
  • the QMK implementation
  • we use it as a cautionary tale against open source
  • we use it as a cautionary tale against designing a board without first being a part of the community
  • we generally ridicule it and have a chuckle at System76’s expense

Several of the comments being made by our own mod team. We took their product, broke it down, ran it through our circle-jerk machine, and had a laugh at its inferiority. How is that not the definition of toxic? How does this not discourage outsiders from wanting to engage in the hobby? We can do so much better than this.

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119

Besides the monstrosity comment which was the HARSHEST of what you listed. The other stuff has nothing to do with a circle jerk but is opinions of people that have some knowledge in the hobby.

Are we not allowed to voice an opinion just because it is negative? Are we at the participation trophy level now?

Its basic criticism. You know who heard worse here and didnt send his people to argue? GMMK

The only bad responses came from the dev team here and some people that rarely take part in this board but suddenly come here to yell. How odd.

How interesting to see you guys melt because people expressed their opinions…

And you know what: I dislike the board too. Crucify my toxic rear end for it cause how dare I not like it.

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120

Ps.;muting this BS level topic.

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121

All of those “toxic” comments were before we got any real insight from a developer or an engineer. At the time we didn’t even have any reviews to watch.

Remember that people can have first impressions of a product. Positive or negative. Don’t you remember the time when several people made negative comments about the iPhone 7 because Apple decided to remove the headphone jack?

Now that a lot of other companies are doing the same, no one cares as much.

Negativity ≠ toxic

I’m glad @jackpot51 came here to give us an insight on the product. I’ll be honest and say it wasn’t exactly handled in the best light, but an insight is an insight, I’ll take that over not knowing anything at all.

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122

:cringe: can we just close this topic? no one is adding anything constructive to this dialogue at this point.

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123

Personally, I think closing it would be just trying to cover our heads in the sand. This is a discussion of a project- did it go badly because of a variety of reasons- yes. But I think there is a lesson to be learned, in that even on the board, the conversations are not private, and what is good fun can be taken as not by others. There is a way to be negative without disparaging- I think some comments listed in the post above go beyond the line, and others don’t. Without an honest conversation (and a place for further conversation about the board itself), we won’t grow or learn.

That’s my .02.

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124

amogus