Originally Posted by
whitmar
It amazes me how this debate typically progresses. It usually starts out reasonably enough, with those who deplore the practice of trading stating the facts that originally led them to that conclusion. By that, I mean facts such as: it's against tracker rules, it puts trackers at risk, it jeopardizes entire invite trees, etc.
I would expect the other side to respond with their own facts extolling the virtues of invite or account trading, e.g. it provides liquidity in the tracker "commodity market", it provides access to people who don't have the communication skills or integrity to seem trustworthy enough to be given a free invite, etc. (I am admittedly reaching, because I don't agree with trading in principle.) Pro-traders could undoubtedly come up with better arguments.
But they don't...
The least pugnacious retort is something like: "I'll trade all I want, and I don't care what anyone else thinks." Well, at least it's honest. I'm glad, though, this doesn't represent the vast majority of bit torrent community members, because there would be very little file sharing taking place. For that matter, there wouldn't have been many collaborating coders and web designers to have started the trackers in the first place with attitudes like that.
The pro-trading tactics I find most objectionable are those that personally attack members who state opposing views. Comments about someone not acting their age or speculations about a member's sexual preference tend to degrade their side's credibility and draw attention to the vacuous nature of their arguments. Attempts to brand vocal opponents as hypocrites does not serve the pro-trading cause very well either, except perhaps as only a distraction from an apparently unsupportable position. I find it laughable that Polarbear was singled out here in that way. I can't think of anyone in this forum with more integrity than he has, and I though his arguments and his analogy were right on target. I was surprised that links were chosen that actually proved that Polarbear showed due diligence in selecting invitees to Waffles and Libble. The poster had to go all the way back to his first two giveaways as a newcomer to the invites section to find what might remotely be seen as casual giveaways to lessor known trackers. And the one asking advice on how to start a poll? The only reason I can think of for adding that one is to look like one more example of hypocrisy to those readers who didn't check the links and assumed they all had some sort of validity. They didn't.
If I may be so presumptuous as to offer some advice to my pro-trading friends, I would simply recommend that when participating in threads like this, just state your case. Many people have open minds here and you just might win people over, recruiting more traders, producing access to more trackers, thus improving you own chances to obtain more trophies, and achieve higher status! Attacking anti trading members tends to create sympathy for them, and ultimately hurts your argument. It might also create some hard feelings that can come back to haunt you.
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j/k this always happens. Somebody starts a thread then it completely diverges into something else. Small ego's meets large ego's, which turns into some people getting emo, misconstruing the facts, and bashing one anothers opinions to get over on the other person or people, yada, yada, yada.
It's verbal war son.
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j/k this always happens. Somebody starts a thread then it completely diverges into something else. Small ego's meets large ego's, which turns into some people getting emo, misconstruing the facts, and bashing one anothers opinions to get over on the other person or people, yada, yada, yada.
It's verbal war son.
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