Re: What direction?
I think personally that a combination of the middle 3 would be a good thing. Diversify but keep the integrity and the depth.
Hardware reviews are important to me, but not for the same reason as the multitude of people. I could care less what is the super smoking highest framerate 34AA double GTXX GPU for the hour, or the CPU that can get the highest score in a 1month PI contest. Im more concerned with a balance of quality, stability, and support in a manufacturer and its products.
You very rarely see a hardware site with its integrity still intact, and if you do its a small one, because they have to buy all the hardware themselves. All the big companies dont want a bad review, and if you give them one they will move on to somewhere else that will give them a good one.
A suggestion to avoid the pitfall of out of pocket expense might be something as follows.....
1. Have a vote/poll every once in awhile (as needed) to see what kind of hardware people are interested in seeing reviewed. Motherboards, CPU, GPU, Network, PSU etc. Maybe at the beginning of a month.
2. After the category is decided, put up another poll with specific items to the category.
3. After it is decided, the community would fork up the cash. I mean lets get real, 1 dollar from each member would be enough to buy most anything to review. And if there is more than is needed then put it in a pool for the next month (or whatever the timeframe is)
4. Another idea is that after the review is done, maybe have a drawing, and the winner would get the review item (drawing from people who donate). This might come later, as having a certain amount of core parts for other uses on the Site would be neccessary. In fact why not build a Core system up first so that these kinds of reviews could be done easily.
Just a thought, and Im sure it could use some fine tuning, but maybe it will stimulate some interest.
Another idea would be to create a sub-forum for people who are new to watercooling, have it moderated by a couple of people who has the skill and paitence to deal with all the questions that new people have, because that will probably be the busiest forum. That way you have these kinds of threads in one area and the technical stuff in another. Its not meant to alienate or isolate new people, but just to consolidate the "Im new to watercooling, what should I buy" threads that clog up every other forum. Its almost a neccessary thing if your looking to generate more traffic.
Angry
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