Privilage not a right!

[Quarterquack]

As awfully wrong as it may sound, Bittorrent is a business environment. The customers get paid in content, the tracker gets back a healthy reputation (such as BCG's), a decent amount of bandwidth, sparse donations, and promise of the longevity on the content, for the tracker.

Both sides get what they need, and in that case both sides are indispensable.

Just as in any business, most customers are expendable. The whole "Let them know your opinion with your wallet" doesn't really work all that well in the real world, and we all know it. Take companies like Rockstar, Microsoft, Apple, Bethseda, the list can go on and on. No matter how upset the customers are, some of them still buy, enough, actually, to keep the business model unchanged. Standing "still" is never good in business, but it also means you're not falling behind.

Similarly, in a tracker environment, I'm sure a lot of the customers, more often than not, are disposable. To put it simply, even if a good member chooses to go against the wishes of the tracker's staff and the common good, the tracker would remain unchanged, and would move on just as he had never been a member of the tracker. Someone else will fulfill his role, someone else will take his duties, someone else will seed just as much as he did, because they probably share the same seeding mindset.

However, I feel this dogma doesn't apply when a good member has a genuine issue, that is for the greater good. I've seen time and again members storm away from a tracker in a tirade, deleting all their personally uploaded torrents etc. and yet, on the opposite side of the spectrum, I've always seen the better members raise their issues cordially, form a poll etc. The latter kind is the one I consider indispensable, for they are the ones that want to not only use the tracker, but actually want to see it become better, just as much if not the same as the actual tracker staff.

My .02$

[A]

As awfully wrong as it may sound, Bittorrent is a business environment. The customers get paid in content, the tracker gets back a healthy reputation (such as BCG's), a decent amount of bandwidth, sparse donations, and promise of the longevity on the content, for the tracker.

Then life and everything you can think of,is business as well.

@Topic:
Staff starts/maintains a community,Members makes it a community.

[megabyteme]

Very well put, rh!

The caveat I will add to your last paragraph is that it is very easy for a good employee/customer/member/staff who has an "issue" to become a complete asshat and tantrum thrower. When this happens, their value- whatever it was, is gone.

There are proper, beneficial, and mature ways to settle disputes ANYWHERE. Both sides need to be open and act like adults (in short) for this to work.


On a personal note, some of my graduate studies involved a Servant Leadership certificate. Stoi's leadership perspective is VERY much congruent with Servant Leadership. Anyone interested in learning more should start with this site: http://www.greenleaf.org/whatissl/index.html and Herman Hesse's book Journey to the East. Good stuff.

[1000possibleclaws]

21 is quite an impressive number. Surprised you are writing in paragraphs

[QPD]

if we opened up tomorrow this is what would happen

1: Members would make new accounts
2: non members would make multi accounts for when we close
3: non members would make multi accounts to use, hit and run, and make more accounts.

Why do you think trackers prune, its not only to get members to use their accounts every so often, its to get rid of the crap they have had to digest over the past so many weeks or so.

There are countless ways to prevent that!

Beein' the best in a certain field involves a lot of responsibility and many decisions made on a sharp edge.But you do a great work and without your contribution BTW won't be the same!

[BABBY]

Stoi

I think real users now a days dont need most of the trackers, but trackers need members.
Since last few years their is an emergence of lot of new things like file sharing sites like rapidshare and some like megaupload etc.

Now a days busy and really hardworking people dont use torrents, even if they use it then they like to use public trackers like demonoid or pirate bay.

Nobody wants to get into the hassle of maintaing an account and then do stuffs like maintaing ratio and other stuffs, they don't have time.

More over the high class people prefer to buy then pirate.

More over today their are lot of trackers for most of the stuffs.
we get almost every thing from some great general trackers like ipt, tl and filelist.ro

but still i dont deny the importance of other trackers, when a person really wants very specific things then he need those site.

More over being a part of a tracker is a privilege on both side, even to staff members and to a member it self.

Trackers dont upload new stuffs neither they host any file except torrent files.
seeders are other people them self, tracker is just a medium of peer exchange.

With new trackers emerging every now and then and with the other sources of file sharing, charm of private trackers has definitely reduced a lot since last 2 to 3 years.

Presence of staff members is also a must for proper functioning

I think that the best way to hand out invites is by irc interview
If u open up signup: people make more than one account and then sell invites or they make multiple accounts and then abuse the tracker by low ratio.
If u give invites to members: Then traders are every where and their are every chances that some or the other may trade them.
If u open irc interview: Then also people may make account and then trade it.


But i think the last one is much better, as u and other staff members will have chance to know the person to some extend, more over some people give very blunt excuses for entering a tracker and the person does not know whether this is a right place to join or not, staff members may decide whether that person will get what he wants or not from that tracker.

Their are various posibilites but i think we should see the brighter side.
I think the interview should be moderate and not very stringent.
Being more stringent will just be loss on your trackers part.

I am also drunk and really i have ample of free time and so i wrote all this long.I read your orignal post and thought that u are a frank person so i wrote all this

above are only my views, only a suggestion.

[superjojo]

Before joining FST I was never a member of any invite forum and I had two domestic trackers and two foreign private trackers due to my good friends. I didn't know which tracker is better
than others which is the l33testor which one has the highest
trade value. I also didn't know that some trackers won't
reveal their full name or login url and so on.
Now I learned a couple of things.

I think that Stoi is doing an awesome thing. Since I joined FST I realized that obviously BCG is the most wanted and the best gamer tracker. I saw a couple of threads in trade section about BCG and noone in the GA section. And suddenly I saw
a post of Stoi that he'll give invitations to a lot
of FST users. Ofcourse I grabbed the opportunity because
I thought this is a lifetime chance for me.
I thought of this gesture from Stoi as a great generousity.

So how many tracker owners comes here and gives invites with
additional uploaded GB. But this is not happened once but
as I have seen a many times in the past few months.
So why open signup?. Who would know that? I guess the members
and they will post in open signup sections of all invite forums
and as Stoi wrote members would make more accounts just to sell them when they'll close. So keep doing this what you do cuz
not everyone that would use his account well is not able to get into BCG.

[BABBY]

more over i think that trading is an issue which is hyped by people, i dont trade neither i am favoring it, but i dont give it much importance, I dont care what people do, i just know what i have to do.

But i think that every thing in this world is a trade itself, and i think we cannot change the world, if people trade let them do it, if u find any trader u should ban him or anything u like, but i think u should not stop helping others.

Their is one line in our local language, i will try to translate its meaning.

Dont waste your time in changing the world or changing the way people do things or think, just concentrate on your final goal and only think and work in that direction, if u dont follow this u will not be able to chance the world but ultimate u will find yourself nowhere.

Just my view

So why open signup?. Who would know that?

Dont take it personla but i am talking general

People forget how eager they were for joining a tracker before they made into that tracker.

If a person is not a member of any tracker which he wants, then he always thinks that their will come one day when the tracker will be open for signup and i will be able to join it.

But when he gets into that tracker then he tells their is no need of open signup or anything else, as he does not care (as he is allready in that tracker and he would not be benifited in any way by open singup, instead he will be in a loss as the tracker will no more an elite one and he would not keep his colour up in front of other forum member stating that i am on this great elite tracker)

[Quarterquack]

Now a days busy and really hardworking people dont use torrents ... charm of private trackers has definitely reduced a lot since last 2 to 3 years.

Except for the fact where torrenting traffic has peaked at a massive 55% of total internet traffic in 2009. Bittorrent isn't slowing down, and if you're going to state it is, back it up with numbers.

http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-s...raffic-090218/

[BABBY]

Now a days busy and really hardworking people dont use torrents ... charm of private trackers has definitely reduced a lot since last 2 to 3 years.

Except for the fact where torrenting traffic has peaked at a massive 55% of total internet traffic in 2009. Bittorrent isn't slowing down, and if you're going to state it is, back it up with numbers.

http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-s...raffic-090218/

with the ever increase no of internet connection and with the fact that internet becoming cheaper day by day this is meant to happen, but the lust for private tracker has definitely reduced, who are well aware of other source of pirating.

more over this stats shows public+private tracker stats and dont forget to read "slight decline". and we are talking of private trackers only not of demonoid and pirate bay.