How Thockery works
Who writes this, where the numbers come from, and what we do when sources disagree.
Who writes it
Articles are published under a house byline, The Thockery Desk, because the site is written and edited by one desk rather than by a cast of contributors. There is no invented expert behind it. If you want to know whether a page is trustworthy, the honest answer is to judge the method below rather than a biography.
Where the specifications come from
Every figure in the index is taken from a manufacturer's own documentation or a retailer's product listing. Nothing is measured here, and nothing is estimated. Currently 94 switches are listed across 63 brands.
Where more than one shop publishes a figure, the figures are compared. 47 of the 94 switch entries carry specifications corroborated by two or more independent retailers, and recorded source references are shown on the switch detail pages. A missing reference list is not treated as corroboration.
What happens when sources disagree
The figure is left out. A blank cell on a comparison table means either that the maker does not publish that number, or that two sources published different ones and we are not willing to pick.
Some real examples, so this is not an abstract promise:
- A retailer lists a 100 gf bottom-out force for a switch that actuates at 45 gf. That is not a bottom-out force, so it is discarded rather than repeated.
- Two shops list a switch's total travel as 3.8 mm and 4.0 mm. Neither is recorded until something settles it.
- Pin count is not recorded at all on switch pages, because manufacturers sell the same switch in three-pin and five-pin versions. It belongs to the item you buy, not to the switch.
Prices, links and money
Prices, where shown, are approximate and carry the date they were last checked. They will drift, and a page that pretends otherwise is lying to you.
10 of the retailer links on this site are affiliate links, which means a purchase made through one pays us a commission. It costs you nothing extra.
Those links are marked "paid link" on the page carrying them, every page with one shows a disclosure, and the footer on every page says so site-wide. None of it is opt-in on our side: the disclosures are generated from the links themselves, so a paid link cannot exist here without being labelled.
What commission does not do is decide anything. A specification is whatever the sources say, a gap stays a gap, and nothing is ranked, recommended or omitted on the basis of what pays. The plain product URL is kept alongside every affiliate link precisely so the figures stay checkable against the vendor.
We sell one sponsorship, the strip under the header, and it is currently unsold. When it sells it will be marked as a sponsor, and it will buy that space and nothing else: no entry, no article and no ranking is affected by who pays for it.
Keeping it current
Manufacturers revise specifications and retailers update listings, so every entry carries the date its figures and links were last checked. Send a better source, particularly a manufacturer's own sheet, and the entry is checked against it and re-dated.
We also accept hardware. A unit in hand settles a figure that two listings disagree on, which is the one thing cross-checking cannot do. An entry verified that way says so on the page, it buys no placement, and what the hardware shows is what the entry says.