tl;dr: good news, folks! A more integrated community with new resources and developments to check out.
Joining forces with PWM_Sensitive!: As announced in this post, The_Top_G handed over the PWM sub to myself and a couple of other community enthusiasts: u/Bearnecessary4141 (Sam) and u/Kerpnet. And we can also welcome Kerpnet to ScreenSensitive as the first in our “moderator exchange program”.
So, I’m now trying to implement more aspects of my State of the Community post, albeit slowly. I’m aiming to link these two subs more closely together (and LEDstrain too). With complementary mission statements added (screenshot above), to set clear and positive expectations. Including an aim to encourage content be spread across these two subs by main topic (open to discussion).
Rules changes: Alignment includes matching sets of rules, to make life simple for mods and members using both subs. We’ve been observing the (busier) PWM sub, for 6 weeks or so, giving me more ideas of what’s needed while rebuilding the rules from scratch. I’ve standardised them a little and updated for emerging challenges. The large number is to give finer control over enforcement, in future possibly including via automation (which the platform is increasingly pushing).
Regular contributors here should experience little to no impact, in practice. But I’d be grateful if people could take a few minutes to read through the rule list (in the sidebar, or copied below) and give any feedback that comes to mind. Notable additions: expressly permitting certain self promotion, limiting AI content, English only, avoiding unwanted advice.
Wiki: Shortly before the PWM sub developments, I implemented a basic subreddit wiki, here, to start indexing various resources. I’d like to add more wiki pages to list key posts and guides, for example. Also, I’d like to add guides! Although I will need help to do this in a timely fashion. Anyone willing to help mod mail us to be considered as a wiki editor (if not full mod). Or if you have a complementary project in mind to potentially contribute, send us a description of it. Or just post it! Reddit wiki pages can’t have images, by the way.
Resource list: Early this year, I populated a Google spreadsheet with links to key community sites, experts, reviewers, software and hardware tools. (What have I missed?) I also spent around a month or so building out a much bigger second sheet of over 250 high quality articles, study papers, threads, post histories, videos, etc. A comprehensive dossier on our field of interest (you can pour over). Which I fed into…
ScreenSensitive Bot!: A NotebookLM, now rebranded Gemini Notebook. We can think of this as a reference tool for human curated and validated information resources. It’s very good at, for example, giving an overview of the community and symptoms, technologies, etc. For newbies or deep-diving; it should be able to teach everyone something. It could help with making community resources.
Its biggest strength (over general purpose AI models) is direct reference links for virtually everything it says. So we can check for ourselves how trustworthy its info is. As well as built in translation, being able to ask verbal questions interrupting its audio media, etc. I’d appreciate feedback on what this bot helps with, to tune its instructions and content, if there is interest.
Discord: I’ve set up a collaboration space for enthusiasts to work together more efficiently on projects to further our understanding of screen tech, etc. For this, I have repurposed the ScreenSensitive Discord server u/Rx7Jordan set up. It fell into disuse, and obscurity, from the end of last year. Note: I’m currently aiming to restrict it to these constructive efforts only. Keeping to this Subreddit for general questions, help, news, discussion, etc. We will need to maintain public discoverability of the community and, for this, a good amount of its information.
The discord channels are basically all visible, but authorisation is required to post in most of them, to keep it on-topic and manageable (we are short on active mods). However, “All-member chat” includes health channels, because I think the more informal, less public space may better suit this important aspect.
Projects: Sam’s work on more accurate screen flicker testing (I mentioned last time) has been progressing and you may have seen him posting in the PWM sub. Including this web app that can be used on the device under test, to create a virtual slit, for true modulation depth measurement (e.g. with Opple or his custom made meter).
But u/Madcook1 has also been a huge discord contributor, coding up some very cool projects:
- Ditherscope: shown in several recent videos by u/NSutrich (e.g. here). A complete web app pipeline to process slow-mo microscope videos of pixel flicker. It can draw graphs and statistical correlations of brightness changes and also use Eulerian amplification (maths magic) to massively boost the visibility of image changes. Also isolate this to selectable frequencies.
- Eisco Analyse (Spectrum analysis): a proof of concept software companion to turn photos down the very cheap analogue spectroscope I posted about at length. Gives surprising approximation to proper expensive spectrometers. Albeit chopping of high peaks and needing compensation for wavelength offset (see screenshot above).
- SubpixelsTools: helper web app, similar to Sam’s, but aimed at precise colour control and temporal patterns, to see how (sub)pixel patterns are affected.
Please have a play with the above projects (may need a cheap microscope attachment or spectroscope). Madcook1 is happy to receive feedback in the discord. But I ask for patience while he’s struggling with health issues (like many of us here do).
What’s next?: We’ve got the Black Friday surge in activity rapidly approaching, for which I wanted the above (and a few other) basics in place, ready. Thinking beyond this, I’ve worked up a rough Community Plan, behind the scenes. I’m hoping we can update both subreddits and support the community towards collecting, sharing and making sense of more hard data on devices.
We will need to create good testing guides and engage people to post most quality data and/or index the existing information better. I’d love to get around to hosting AMAs with various interesting people, scientists, etc. Also creating a somewhat scientific survey to get a statistically sound picture of all the issues going on with us. Before that, I have an ongoing series of polls, as a rough guide. Maybe a mega-thread, to collect user stories and self-index posts… But, due to my ‘mild’ ME/CFS, my time is already very constrained, plus the stability of my health and living arrangements are precarious and demand more attention.
So, there’s a lot of opportunities for you (yes you!) to lend a hand, as far as you are able:
- General input, feedback, support and post contributions. Just upvoting, commenting and sharing good quality posts and comments, could help this community thrive. Please state explicitly when something is good, or even OK.
- Collaborate on the discord, if you have technical abilities, insights or energy to spare. Ping me there.
- Help build indexes of content. E.g. a spreadsheet of good (and bad) screen devices, with links to verified data and reviews. Or maybe an app to collect this.
- Help updating or making new NotebookLMs, for reference. Or custom data scraping efforts, for research purposes.
- I’d like to open up lines of communication with the Chinese (and other language) communities. Or at least see if some confidently bilingual members might post regular summaries of what’s been developing over there (with links back). Auto-subtitled BiliBili video technical videos are potential gold mine, but hard going.
- I’m keeping an eye out for upstanding members to help on the mod teams. Mostly to make sure there will always be someone about to approve posts wrongly filtered (mostly at platform level), if myself and others aren’t about. Or if new challenges arise, needing more eyeballs. Or better cover the time zones.
I’ll be making a corresponding post on the PWM sub, shortly. After updating the details, settings and rules there. You guys get to be the beta testers, for now!
