Suggestions for Neowin

[thisdude]

Neowin needs to start writting op-ed pieces on tech and gaming. 

Bring back the wallpaper and desktop monthly forum posts.

Forum contests.

Collabs with other tech/forum sites...the few that are left. 

Internview some people in tech and gaming.

Make forums great again lol! Get traffic back from social media apps and Discord. All the age verification drama is a great time for forums to be re-discovered and re-vitalized! To be the helpful places of tech and geek culture and knowledge. 

[Barney T. Administrators]

On 27/02/2026 at 14:43, thisdude said:

Neowin needs to start writting op-ed pieces on tech and gaming. 

Bring back the wallpaper and desktop monthly forum posts.

Forum contests.

Collabs with other tech/forum sites...the few that are left. 

Internview some people in tech and gaming.

Make forums great again lol! Get traffic back from social media apps and Discord. All the age verification drama is a great time for forums to be re-discovered and re-vitalized! To be the helpful places of tech and geek culture and knowledge. 

Thank you for providing your suggestions on Neowin. We really appreciate the time that you took thinking through this. We always take suggestions seriously and will do the same with yours. Cheers!

Best,

Barney

[Steven P. Administrators]

Thanks for the suggestions:

Collabs with other tech/forum sites -

yeah, some sites had a collab with us back in the day especially for the traffic "sharing" but it was mostly not reciprocal. We used to run TechSpot reviews on our main site (the owner had access to our CMS) and we had a newsletter sharing, but our content on their newsletter or website was limited to a tiny percentage of the overall despite us having their newsletter sign up here on Neowin for years and their content featured prominently week in week out. You can see how often their news was on Neowin here https://www.neowin.net/news/tags/techspot/ do a search for Neowin articles featured in TechSpot's news  

Other sites we used to work with got taken over and they banned their writers from linking to "rivals" (I have been explicitly told this) and that's where we are today. The whole creditting a "via" (as in the reporter saw the article on x, but y is the source) is also something hardly ever done anymore so we moved to only creditting like that too unless the x (non source) added something meaningful to the original source story.

In the early noughties (2000-2010) was a really great time, with a lot of tech sites working closely together, and we even had a link exchange on the main site (with badges) you can view examples on TheWayBackMachine. I was one of the last still operating sites to remove our link exchanges badges in the sidebar, because most of the others had either died out or been taken over and removed our link. But back then we had the benefit of actually meeting each other face to face with Microsoft paying to fly us over to Redmond once a year, as we were "community influencers" Microsoft stopped doing all that so it was harder to come together, since most of us are independents and haven't got the money to fly across the world for a meetup.

Others are all good suggestions if our tech forum side was a bit busier. I always try to jump on tech related questions when I see them  

There's also a certain someone who works on three different Windows tech-news websites, and spams reddit and/or has some sort of agreement with the mods there that he can post his own news on r/windows and r/technology (which is against reddit's own rules on self promotion) he got Neowin banned off r/windows too and is basically a really horrible person who posts old news as new (sometimes months old) and he never credits the original source for his finds (we do after a little bit of research on our part). And no I won't say who and what websites because he doesn't deserve any sort of recognition. With scum like him also in the scene it is also harder, because his efforts muddy the waters a bit. I like to think I give everyone multiple chances, but he wore them all out.

[thisdude]

Yes, during the Windows XP days is how I found Neowin. Peak times for computer geeks and forums. I remember all the sidebar buttons that linked to sister sites, Activewin, Hardkwaregeeks. WatchingMicrosoftLikeAHawk, Bink.nu, etc.

I'm sure my age is showing, especially with wallpaper/desktop forum posting lol. But I do miss those geeky days. Everyone shared and was cool. Neowin was a great forum back then to post questions about your computer issues, get suggestions and recommendations. And just share geeky stuff. 

I check the site almost daily for tech and gaming news. The ads don't bother me because I totally understand that it takes money to keep websites going and people running them deserve compensation for the time put into keeping them going.

Well I really appreciate the reply, wasn't sure if anyone would lol. Hope you guys have a great weekend!