about

who we are

Editorial standards, voice, and how we cover the hobby. Knowledgeable peer, never breathless hype.

What thock covers

thock is a content hub for mechanical-keyboard hobbyists who care about the parts, the builds, and the trade-offs. Five pillars cover the beat:

  • News — what's shipping, vendor moves, the broader industry signal.
  • Trends — how taste in switches, layouts, and keycaps moves week-to-week, anchored by the Trends Tracker dashboard.
  • Ideas & Builds — hands-on builds, mods, and the half-formed ideas that turn into hobbies.
  • Deep Dives — long-form, sourced, and unhurried.
  • Guides — practical reference: firmware, modding, switches, keycaps.

Voice

thock is written like a knowledgeable peer, not a hype-bro. The wordmark is lowercase on purpose. Technical terms (switch names, firmware identifiers, profile codes, SKUs) wrap in mono so they stand out from the prose without shouting. Headlines lean italic in Newsreader; body type is IBM Plex Sans. The single restrained accent is warm brass / aged bronze, used for the wordmark dot, the last 72 hours of a group buy, and hover affordances — never decoration.

How trends scoring works

The Trends Tracker scores switches, keycaps, layouts, vendors, and brands on a single −100 to 100 scale, updated weekly. The score is a weighted blend of community chatter, retail availability, and editorial mentions — direction matters more than absolute magnitude. Row names link to the deep dive that earned them, when one has been published. Empty cells are honest about where coverage hasn't caught up yet.

Read the Trends Tracker preview for the full methodology.

Vendor relationships

Group-buy URLs published on thock are auto-flagged with rel="sponsored noopener" at render time. That tag is applied by the site, not the editorial team, and applies whether or not thock has any commercial relationship with the vendor in question. We do not currently have affiliate arrangements with any vendor we cover. If that ever changes, the disclosure updates here first.

Citations across articles surface on the Sources page so the reader can audit where the facts came from.