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97 Comments Comment from the forums

ex_bubblehead

I'll keep it simple. Drop all political content and disable comments on anything that may even hint at politics. This is a tech site, not a political commentary site. In addition, when referencing the president do not refer to him as simply "Trump". He is to be addressed as "President Trump", it doesn't matter whether you like him or not.
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wakuwaku

Either get rid of staff using AI, and the AI itself altogether. Or train you staff to use AI to augment their writing. NOT REPLACE their writing on top of NOT FACTCHECKING their own writing.
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evdjj3j

Shut it down like Anandtech, Tom's is just a shell of it's former self.
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Jeremy Kaplan

wakuwaku said:
Either get rid of staff using AI, and the AI itself altogether. Or train you staff to use AI to augment their writing. NOT REPLACE their writing on top of NOT FACTCHECKING their own writing.
We're with you 100%. In fact, so is our parent company, Future: We have an AI Policy doc (internal only, I'm afraid) that spells out how and when to use AI, and it is explicit: NOTHING is written with AI. We don't use it for fact checking either. Never have and never will ... the expertise we have on staff is far more valuable than summarized BS from a bot.
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evdjj3j

Since you all already deleted this excellent comment, I'll repost it.

baboma
I think it's fairly evident that Tom's Hardware needs to expand its coverage from just PC hardware.

The stark fact is that sites like this need year-round content to attract year-round readership, and PC news & HW reviews aren't enough to fill the large volume required. So we have the occasional above-average first-party content, supplemented by lots of filler content that are largely scraped from other sites.

In a sense, Toms Guide is already filling this role. But AFAICT it mainly caters to tech gadgets, with a bit of Lifestyle mixed in, and the writing level is low-quality enough to be on par with CNet's, and be a second-tier Engadget. There's already a crowd of tech gadget sites, and the economic imperative (ad-financed) means writing quality will necessarily stay at the low end. This isn't a knock, just an honest appraisal of the financial reality.

TomsGuide's issue is that it tries to cover everything. The overly broad coverage results in shallow if not superficial content. TomsHW can differentiate from this by sticking with one or two topics that can generate lots of content (and interest), and provide more depth.

Sticking with the PC theme, and consumer tech in general, one emergent topic (and interest) will be client-side AI. For now, the interest is still around the basic "ChatGPT's uses" level, but will grow as AI uses expand. You can cover everything from how-tos ("install & optimize LLM on your PC", "best LLMs", etc), to best practices, to higher-level items like AI's impact on society, etc. Look at the exploding AI topics/channels on YouTube as a guide. Then hire one or two good AI writers.

But any way you slice it, any "improvement" will mean more money spent. So the real question is, will THW get any more funding for improvement, or is this just shuffling stuff around to make things look better.

PS: Also, can you get rid of the braindead Hammerbot shtick? At this point, it's just an embarassment.
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punkncat

ex_bubblehead said:
I'll keep it simple. Drop all political content and disable comments on anything that may even hint at politics. This is a tech site, not a political commentary site. In addition, when referencing the president do not refer to him as simply "Trump". He is to be addressed as "President Trump", it doesn't matter whether you like him or not.

This is winner winner chicken dinner as far as I am concerned. There is ZERO place for a one sided discussion where Admin gets to spew political drivel while the users can only be pinged for having a different opinion or attempting to discuss anything outside that narrow view.
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spongiemaster

ex_bubblehead said:
I'll keep it simple. Drop all political content and disable comments on anything that may even hint at politics. This is a tech site, not a political commentary site. In addition, when referencing the president do not refer to him as simply "Trump". He is to be addressed as "President Trump", it doesn't matter whether you like him or not.
Don't talk about politics. Only recommendation? Politically based, with nothing to do with tech. Brilliant.

I don't know where you are from, but here in America, no one says President in front of their name when talking about them in regular conversation. Everyone knows who they are.
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Jeremy Kaplan

ex_bubblehead said:
I'll keep it simple. Drop all political content and disable comments on anything that may even hint at politics. This is a tech site, not a political commentary site. In addition, when referencing the president do not refer to him as simply "Trump". He is to be addressed as "President Trump", it doesn't matter whether you like him or not.

Government regulations and policies have an undeniable impact on the market, so we absolutely cover them. The CHIPS Act, export controls, tariffs, and more impact the stuff you buy and what it costs you, and so we report on it fairly and honestly, I hope.

But there's nothing political on TH, afaik. Please let me know if you have seen otherwise. And we always refer to the president as "President Trump" or "President Donald Trump" on first reference. Again, if you've seen otherwise do let me know.
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evdjj3j

Couldn't finish your survey. When I got to the part about buying a premium membership it wouldn't accept 0 as an answer to the questions.

Spoiler alert the survey is just trying to feel out how receptive we would be to a premium subscription.
Reply
evdjj3j

punkncat said:
This is winner winner chicken dinner as far as I am concerned. There is ZERO place for a one sided discussion where Admin gets to spew political drivel while the users can only be pinged for having a different opinion or attempting to discuss anything outside that narrow view.
The person you quoted is the one who does that.
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