Topic: Custom Hardware Organization? - page 2. (Read 1728 times)

I guess this is my point. There used to be discussion in the Custom Hardware forum regarding the whole of "ASICs" and "FPGAs". Now's there's discussion about specific ASICs in specific threads and nothing else. These threads are designed to have a high bump count (noise) and low content (signal). Additionally, they are almost always about compiling money or funds for development of a specific product. They are far more marketing than discussion. That makes them different than the others.

It's looking like the kind of discussions that I was more interested in have moved to "Mining" instead. Maybe I should be reading that forum. But if this is the case, keep in mind that eventually Custom Hardware is going to be made up of nothing *but* group buys and custom hardware sales as readers like myself abandon it.

Judging by the increase in the use of "Mining" lately, it seems others have settled on this as well.

Here's a thread that should be in Custom Hardware, but isn't:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/next-gen-mining-platform-500k-tabluts-2ghz-abax-2p1-processor-232062

In it, he's not selling anything yet, just getting feedback on the viability, so it doesn't make sense to post in a forum where group buys make up the entire first page of posts. That said, if I reported it and said it should be in "Custom Hardware", it'd totally kill the thread.

And now Group Buys are falling into the "Mining" category even:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/group-buy-12-kncminer-jupiters-escrow-by-john-k-227986

The only reason I'm not a huge fan of group buys having their own category is that they are closely related to board development discussions. The best example are those Avalon and K16 discussions. There are threads for the chip announcements, board developments, cooling/housing designs, assembly companies, hosting comanies, and finally the group buys. A lot of the threads can be seen as a mix of two or more of those, even. However, they all have one thing in common: Avalon. There is no BFL discussion in those threads, or even ASICminer comparisons. Well there inevitably is a little, but it's extremely minimal.

I can also see the downside of grouping companies into categories, and it's the same thing that happened in the pool sub-forum. The top 10 pools used to be stickied, but people started complaining. How come X pool get sticked, but my Y pool isn't? Pool A has been around longer than B, so how come B is sticked and A isn't? Why is this 1200GH/s pool sticked, but this 1100GH/s pool not? It's impossible to manage. I could see that becoming an issue for any manufacturer that isn't BFL/Avalon/ASICMiner. Hey, we want to start selling ASICs, why don't we have our own subforum? And not just every scam or ASIC announcement will get their own subcategory, either.

I think the point where a category should be made is when most activity in a forum is surrounded around a specific-type of thread. I wouldn't be opposed to company-specific categories, but really what it seems to be coming down to is group buys vs pretty-much-everything-else right now. I agree that these should probably be moved to the marketplace or made into a sub-category, they are almost-exclusively made up of people wanting to spend Bitcoin, and who don't really post in any of the other threads (of which I'm having a harder and harder time to find because they don't get updated as often).

groupbuys as a subforum in custom hardware sounds good.  Easy enough for people to go from one to the other and not be a ghost town

a lot of threads are a mixture of things. lots of support in group buy threads as well as dev threads, and a lot of dev talk and support talk in announcement threads.

i think subforums for major companies is a decent idea.

The group buys for ASIC have been in custom hardware and I think it makes sense there, but having a subforum in hardware for group buys might help with us keeping track of the group buys vs discussion.  I know that I, for one, only look at hte custom hardware subforum to browse through group buys.

I don't think it necessarily belongs in marketp place since it's not really a true buy-sell transaction.  Rather, we are networking to find a group of people who all want the same thing to get a volume discount etc.

First of all I love the recent efforts to keep the LTC discussion out of the Hardware subforum, except where it is directly relevant. Makes reading it much easier.

I recently went on vacation, and came back to pages and pages of threads in the Custom Hardware subsection. Now I realize this is my own fault for not checking in every day , but then I saw THIS THREAD, and it seems I'm not the only one.

The Customer Hardware section had 2-3 pages of threads that had new posts within the last 24 hours, and 6+ pages for threads that have new posts in the past week. That's a lot to go through, even for someone who isn't a newbie.

So my question is this, what would be the best way to cleanup or organize that section? Throw the group buys into their own section in the marketplace?

My idea was to organize the threads by what type of chip they use: For example you throw all the BFL and BFL-chip threads into one section, all the Avalon and Avalon-chip threads into another, and finally all the ASICMiner and ASICMiner-chip threads into a third. Example: The Avalon section would contain all Avalon discussions, including board development, group buys, Q&A threads, etc. The only downside is that newer or smaller companies wouldn't get their own catagories, but for already established companies, it would be easier for people to find what they're looking for.

Another option is to maybe keep all of the companies together, but organize the Custom Hardware section by Dev/Group-buys/Support? This fixes the issue for smaller ASIC manufacturers, but doesn't keep relevant topics together as well, IMO.

Tell me what you think.