Custom Hardware Organization?

[crazyates]

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.

[WuLabsWuTecH]

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.

[nubbins]

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.

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.

[DPoS]

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.

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

[Raize]

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).

[crazyates]

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.

[Raize]

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://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=232062.0

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://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=227986.0

[Raize]

Sorry to bump again so soon. Felt like this needed to be more than an edit.

How about having things organized like so:

Mining:
* Mining Discussion - By Default anything not otherwise classified goes in here. Could even be formulated to be a "newbie" forum to help clear that one up.
* Mining Support - Specifically posts that end in question marks would generally get moved here, as well as specific product support threads.
* Mining Software - Discussions on firmware and the various mining softwares
* Mining Hardware - General Product discussion, no sales or sales-like threads allowed
* Mining Speculation - Ideally this would be for talking about difficulty as well as miner-specific ideas.
* Mining Sales - Group buys, custom hardware sales. Ideally, companies that have discussion posts elsewhere in the Mining subcategory would link to the threads in here when they are actually exchanging BTC.

[BadBear]

It probably is time to end the custom hardware segregation, it's gotten pretty busy for one subforum buried so deep, and it's not all vaporware anymore. Custom hardware should probably be removed or renamed and the threads there spread out where they belong, they are much more relevant to mining these days, than back when it was first categorized the way it is. Just look at the difference between hardware, and custom hardware (which is it's child board). Doesn't really make sense anymore.    

Easiest solution I can think of is to move the general custom hardware threads to hardware (the threads Raize is referring to would mostly be here), support, mining, wherever they go, and then use the custom hardware subforum as a temporary mining marketplace forum (group buys mostly) while we see just how busy it is and whether a separate marketplace for mining is necessary.

[Raize]

Yeah, that sounds good enough for now, anyway. Maybe just rename it to "Hardware Sales" or something? I mean, it's hard to know the direction things will be going in the future for mining, but right now it just doesn't really match what the categories for discussion are. The users have started using the whole of the Mining subcategory differently than it is presently categorized, anyway as evidenced by some of the threads I've linked.

[AFox]

Its pretty hard to see the topics that are actually talking about the hardware. There are plenty of group buys.
My opinion would be to split the Hardware section and rearrange like this (I think it would be the easiest way of doing it) :
|--Mining
      |--Computer Hardware (CPU, GPU, Rig ....)
      |--Custom Hardware (FPGA, ASIC, ...)
                 |--Group-Buy, Services


It would be a hassle but it would be nice to have something like this :
|--Mining
      |--Computer Hardware (CPU, GPU, Rig ....)
      |--Custom Hardware (FPGA, ASIC, ...)
                 |--AsicMiner
                 |--Avalon
                 |--BFL
                 |--KNCMiner
                 |--Group-Buy, Services

[jspielberg]

Right now Custom Hardware is a mess... please do something .... ANYTHING!!!

I think subforums for SALES/Marketing/Group Buys would go a long way towards making it a readable subforum.

[icebear888]

Right now Custom Hardware is a mess... please do something .... ANYTHING!!!

I think subforums for SALES/Marketing/Group Buys would go a long way towards making it a readable subforum.

Yes, I like your layout!

[CoinHoarder]

Come on mods... 2.2% say the subforum is fine the way it is.

It is obvious something needs to be done.....

[tysat]

Come on mods... 2.2% say the subforum is fine the way it is.

It is obvious something needs to be done.....

Mods don't make the decision, admins do.

[Cablez]

Another twist with the BFL chip codes and the custom hardware sub forum is now unreadable.  Please someone sort it out soon.

[theymos]

Sections need to be vendor-neutral. What do you think of:

Mining
    Hardware
        [directly in Hardware: ASIC, etc.]
        Low-performance hardware (CPU, GPU, etc.)
        Group buys

I'll move everything currently in Hardware directly to Low-performance and everything in Custom Hardware to Hardware.

Are more sections than this needed?

[Raize]

Instead of "Low-performance", how about just "Other"? I could see some discussion on a wide range of things (GPU arrays?) in the future, and obviously the alt-coin folks are going to be viewing it pretty regularly...

I agree on avoiding vendor-specific, that could definitely turn into problems.

Seems like people are already using "Hardware" to talk about just the hardware anyway, most are avoiding Custom like the plague now. I'd like to get the link in my signature moved to Hardware, in fact.

EDIT: I think mostly though, the biggest issue is that there's just a crapload of "Group Buy" posts. Even if we just had a section just for that, I think it'd be sufficient.

[CoinHoarder]

Sections need to be vendor-neutral. What do you think of:

Mining
    Hardware
        [directly in Hardware: ASIC, etc.]
        Low-performance hardware (CPU, GPU, etc.)
        Group buys

I'll move everything currently in Hardware directly to Low-performance and everything in Custom Hardware to Hardware.

Are more sections than this needed?

This sounds perfect.  

Having a separate sub forum for group buys will clear out most of the clutter. Make sure to put up a notice like in the securities subforum that you don't remove likely scams, etc... bound to be some scammers that pop up in there. Cheers, and thanks!

[BadBear]

Sections need to be vendor-neutral. What do you think of:

Mining
    Hardware
        [directly in Hardware: ASIC, etc.]
        Low-performance hardware (CPU, GPU, etc.)
        Group buys

I'll move everything currently in Hardware directly to Low-performance and everything in Custom Hardware to Hardware.

Are more sections than this needed?

Sounds good, I'm still thinking about whether we need a mining marketplace forum to separate that stuff out. I'd rather see actual discussion about hardware, and not companies advertising, like the difference between services and service discussion.  Using the current marketplace works, but that stuff is very specific and probably isn't interesting to the rest of the forum. Computer hardware is already flooded with asic/FPGA stuff.