Banned From What.CD - Questions For Anyone Who Can Help..

[IdolEyes787]

The paranoia comment you made is probably true. Our paranoia isn't unwarranted though - arrests for running sites like this may seem surreal to you, but they're very much a part of our realities as staff members.

[cinephilia]

nice one Idoleyes - we have a variant in french:

"ce n'est pas parce qu'ils disent que vous êtes paranoïaque que vous n'êtes pas suivi"

"just because they say you're paranoid doesn't mean you're not being followed"

[LubTheStaringCat]

Hey MrLex,

See, the thing is, we as staff members deal with a lot of invite sellers. We know quite a bit about their business model, including diversionary tactics, injections of plausible deniability, and a "don't admit to anything in the disabled channel and I'll send you another invite" clause. The great amount of discouragement invite buyers get from telling the truth makes it extremely difficult to trust anyone invited by a known seller.

In your case, the person who invited you was selling invites on the exact same board. While it's possible that you didn't buy the invite yourself, it is difficult to believe that you didn't know it was going on. You underestimate the amount of time and effort you could have saved everyone had you simply reported him. As such, I agree with TedMaul's decision to leave you disabled.

Now, in response to this:

Here's the thing about What.cd. And I mean this in the nicest way possible, so don't confuse my point. 80% of the admins there have some sort of issue. Some of them are on an ego trip, some are paranoid, others are very elitist. Some have all of these problems.

It may seem that way to someone who was banned from the tracker, I'll warrant that. But becoming staff on our site is hard. You have to demonstrate hard work, commitment and all those things, but the most serious thing that we look for is whether or not you're a cool dude.

Look at it this way. You're staff on a site. You devote 90% of your free time to a hundred thousand people you've never met. What does this entail? This entails deleting and editing torrents uploaded by stupid/malicious people to keep the torrent quality high. This includes moderating the forums to keep the community from degenerating into 4chan. This includes keeping the members of the site safe from possible arrests. And this includes, instead of simply glining or ignoring people who have been disabled the way many other trackers do, running a very busy channel where they can come to speak directly to staff members.

Now, imagine you had a job where you had to spend 6+ hours a day being lied to by scumbags who don't give a shit about everything you've worked for. This is what running the disabled channel and talking to hit and runners, traders, sellers, and cheaters all day is like.

How long do you think you'd last in that job, before you lost faith in humanity and suffered from a mental breakdown?

If you're like most people, you'd probably last a couple weeks. Now, imagine being a What.CD staffer, where you have to deal with this every day, during your free time, for months and months. Do you have any idea how cool you have to be in order to do all this, without being compensated at all, and not start tearing your hair out?

The paranoia comment you made is probably true. Our paranoia isn't unwarranted though - arrests for running sites like this may seem surreal to you, but they're very much a part of our realities as staff members.

But we continue staffing. Why?

Is it because we're elitist? Is it because we're on permanent ego trips? I wouldn't say so.

We do what we do because we believe that the world needs it. We delete transcodes because they harm the quality of the site. We ban cheaters because they harm the site economy. We ban the trees of invite abusers to keep people safe. And we do this, for no reward but the loss of free time and the risk of arrest, because we love the site.

We love the site, we love the music collection, and we love the community that surrounds it all. And we do what we do to keep it all working.

And you call us elitist ego tripping paranoiacs.

I hope I've changed your opinion on the What.CD staff - you may not get that impression when you're in a channel normally frequented by the bane of the torrenting world, but everyone on the What.CD staff is extremely cool. If not, there's no way they'd be able to handle it.

Well done...Well said, "WhatMan" I commend you for your explanation.
Impressive

[cabedna]

Hey MrLex,

See, the thing is, we as staff members deal with a lot of invite sellers. We know quite a bit about their business model, including diversionary tactics, injections of plausible deniability, and a "don't admit to anything in the disabled channel and I'll send you another invite" clause. The great amount of discouragement invite buyers get from telling the truth makes it extremely difficult to trust anyone invited by a known seller.

In your case, the person who invited you was selling invites on the exact same board. While it's possible that you didn't buy the invite yourself, it is difficult to believe that you didn't know it was going on. You underestimate the amount of time and effort you could have saved everyone had you simply reported him. As such, I agree with TedMaul's decision to leave you disabled.

Now, in response to this:

Here's the thing about What.cd. And I mean this in the nicest way possible, so don't confuse my point. 80% of the admins there have some sort of issue. Some of them are on an ego trip, some are paranoid, others are very elitist. Some have all of these problems.

It may seem that way to someone who was banned from the tracker, I'll warrant that. But becoming staff on our site is hard. You have to demonstrate hard work, commitment and all those things, but the most serious thing that we look for is whether or not you're a cool dude.

Look at it this way. You're staff on a site. You devote 90% of your free time to a hundred thousand people you've never met. What does this entail? This entails deleting and editing torrents uploaded by stupid/malicious people to keep the torrent quality high. This includes moderating the forums to keep the community from degenerating into 4chan. This includes keeping the members of the site safe from possible arrests. And this includes, instead of simply glining or ignoring people who have been disabled the way many other trackers do, running a very busy channel where they can come to speak directly to staff members.

Now, imagine you had a job where you had to spend 6+ hours a day being lied to by scumbags who don't give a shit about everything you've worked for. This is what running the disabled channel and talking to hit and runners, traders, sellers, and cheaters all day is like.

How long do you think you'd last in that job, before you lost faith in humanity and suffered from a mental breakdown?

If you're like most people, you'd probably last a couple weeks. Now, imagine being a What.CD staffer, where you have to deal with this every day, during your free time, for months and months. Do you have any idea how cool you have to be in order to do all this, without being compensated at all, and not start tearing your hair out?

The paranoia comment you made is probably true. Our paranoia isn't unwarranted though - arrests for running sites like this may seem surreal to you, but they're very much a part of our realities as staff members.

But we continue staffing. Why?

Is it because we're elitist? Is it because we're on permanent ego trips? I wouldn't say so.

We do what we do because we believe that the world needs it. We delete transcodes because they harm the quality of the site. We ban cheaters because they harm the site economy. We ban the trees of invite abusers to keep people safe. And we do this, for no reward but the loss of free time and the risk of arrest, because we love the site.

We love the site, we love the music collection, and we love the community that surrounds it all. And we do what we do to keep it all working.

And you call us elitist ego tripping paranoiacs.

I hope I've changed your opinion on the What.CD staff - you may not get that impression when you're in a channel normally frequented by the bane of the torrenting world, but everyone on the What.CD staff is extremely cool. If not, there's no way they'd be able to handle it.

I should probably clarify some things.

-You seem like a pretty nice dude in your own right. But if your definition of "cool" is being rude in irc, being apprehensive about very MINOR torrent details that don't even violate the rules, and being complacent about forum posts that aren't "worthy of time", then I guess the guys I came into contact with are real cool. Maybe I just had REALLY bad luck with the guys I came in contact with. But on the other hand, all my friends on What.cd agree with me on all those points. So apparently not. But you know that 20% of the staff I said was nice? That obviously includes you. Perhaps your fellow admins are nice to you, but from what I've seen they look at the "lesser" members with contempt and apprehension.

-You're totally right about the "thankless job" thing. I can understand that completely. Obviously not all your partners will be able to keep it together as well as someone like you all the time. So maybe the "good" admins like you should start keeping closer watch on the ones who treat the site more like a game than a job.

-And about that...it IS a job. Not a game. One problem with a lot of the What.cd admins I dealt with (especially in IRC) was that they acted like the whole situation was a game where they would win no matter what. Sort of like the book Catch 22. (No matter what you say to me, you are wrong and you will be banned/turned down/put down.)

-I'm sure every tracker thinks they have cool admins. And despite everything I said above, you probably still know better than me just on principle. But the reality is that most trackers don't have cool admins. Helpful? Maybe. Knowledgable? Usually. Cool and nice? Well, I guess only a few trackers win that one.

I hope you don't mind me saying this, because What.cd is a cut above the rest in many aspects, but IMHO one of your "competing trackers" Waffles.fm has nicer people overall. More helpful? Perhaps not. But at least they try and don't call you a fool.

Buy hey man, you are obviously a hard worker over there and all this is just small talk. So don't take any of that too hard. You work for a good tracker that has a lot going for it. Just because I don't prefer it doesn't mean it isn't great.

[TP635]

This includes moderating the forums to keep the community from degenerating into 4chan

.
What is wrong with that? i love 4chan and wish that tracker's forum are like 4chan

[soulreaper]

Hey MrLex,

See, the thing is, we as staff members deal with a lot of invite sellers. We know quite a bit about their business model, including diversionary tactics, injections of plausible deniability, and a "don't admit to anything in the disabled channel and I'll send you another invite" clause. The great amount of discouragement invite buyers get from telling the truth makes it extremely difficult to trust anyone invited by a known seller.

In your case, the person who invited you was selling invites on the exact same board. While it's possible that you didn't buy the invite yourself, it is difficult to believe that you didn't know it was going on. You underestimate the amount of time and effort you could have saved everyone had you simply reported him. As such, I agree with TedMaul's decision to leave you disabled.

Now, in response to this:

Here's the thing about What.cd. And I mean this in the nicest way possible, so don't confuse my point. 80% of the admins there have some sort of issue. Some of them are on an ego trip, some are paranoid, others are very elitist. Some have all of these problems.

It may seem that way to someone who was banned from the tracker, I'll warrant that. But becoming staff on our site is hard. You have to demonstrate hard work, commitment and all those things, but the most serious thing that we look for is whether or not you're a cool dude.

Look at it this way. You're staff on a site. You devote 90% of your free time to a hundred thousand people you've never met. What does this entail? This entails deleting and editing torrents uploaded by stupid/malicious people to keep the torrent quality high. This includes moderating the forums to keep the community from degenerating into 4chan. This includes keeping the members of the site safe from possible arrests. And this includes, instead of simply glining or ignoring people who have been disabled the way many other trackers do, running a very busy channel where they can come to speak directly to staff members.

Now, imagine you had a job where you had to spend 6+ hours a day being lied to by scumbags who don't give a shit about everything you've worked for. This is what running the disabled channel and talking to hit and runners, traders, sellers, and cheaters all day is like.

How long do you think you'd last in that job, before you lost faith in humanity and suffered from a mental breakdown?

If you're like most people, you'd probably last a couple weeks. Now, imagine being a What.CD staffer, where you have to deal with this every day, during your free time, for months and months. Do you have any idea how cool you have to be in order to do all this, without being compensated at all, and not start tearing your hair out?

The paranoia comment you made is probably true. Our paranoia isn't unwarranted though - arrests for running sites like this may seem surreal to you, but they're very much a part of our realities as staff members.

But we continue staffing. Why?

Is it because we're elitist? Is it because we're on permanent ego trips? I wouldn't say so.

We do what we do because we believe that the world needs it. We delete transcodes because they harm the quality of the site. We ban cheaters because they harm the site economy. We ban the trees of invite abusers to keep people safe. And we do this, for no reward but the loss of free time and the risk of arrest, because we love the site.

We love the site, we love the music collection, and we love the community that surrounds it all. And we do what we do to keep it all working.

And you call us elitist ego tripping paranoiacs.

I hope I've changed your opinion on the What.CD staff - you may not get that impression when you're in a channel normally frequented by the bane of the torrenting world, but everyone on the What.CD staff is extremely cool. If not, there's no way they'd be able to handle it.

That was very informative. Just one question, if MrLex wasn't guilty of buying an invite but became a good user on what, why can't he be reenabled or better yet invite him yourself? Just a thought..

[Duckater]

That was very informative. Just one question, if MrLex wasn't guilty of buying an invite but became a good user on what, why can't he be reenabled or better yet invite him yourself? Just a thought..

The problem with this is thaqt one or the other proving that an invite was bought or given is next to impossible. Any invite seller will deny they sold the invites and if some one buys one they will not admit it. On the other side it is also impossible for the tracker to prove they did buy it.
Hence why when some on is proved to sell invites the whole tree goes as any one of the people in the tree could have bought their invites and there is a slight chance they will then sell invites they get to get the money back they paid to get in

[Toodles]

This is the downside of making shortcuts. You either become friends and spend time to make a name for yourself and get invited everywhere because you deserve it or you trade, buy, ask in public for invites or any other way that creates situations like this.

"The way you make your bed is the way you will sleep"

[IdolEyes787]

See I believe this is the exact type of attitude that is hurting bt . "Making a name for yourself" and "deserving it"?

[SonsOfLiberty]

See I believe this is the exact type of attitude that is hurting bt . "Making a name for yourself" and "deserving it"?

I hate BT and I do agree there, very well put.....I hate BT, because every person I ever meat at a torrent site think they deserve something or are better than you....I'll stay on my geeky Usenet and let BT take all the heat, BT thinks itself a god/and some users too using BT, but your/you people are only making a "bigger" target for yourself, don't know about you, but I'd rather not have the heat lying in my made bed.