Privilage not a right!

[stoi]

Before i start, i am slightly drunk (21 bottles of bud tonight), but that is no excuse.

I keep hearing this, over and over again, but what a load of bollocks it is.

to put it simply

without me, BCG would not exist, without the staff, it may exist, but it may be not as good as it is, without the members, it will be worthless.

OK, if you fuck up and break whatever rules a tracker has, then you deserve to be banned, if we never had rules, then it would just be a bloody mess.

But we both need each other, without a tracker, there is no members, and without any members, there is no tracker.

So the privilage is on both sides, but there are plenty other trackers out there for you to go to (ok maybe not as good as BCG :wacko: sorry drunk like i said) but there is only 1 of you (as lomg as you are a good member).

And if anyone says why dont you open up then, well i really want to, but blame the traders/sellers. When you see 250 accounts getting made by the same person just so that when we close they can go and trade/sell them, it is disheartening and you think bloody pointless doing it.

anyway bit of a puke moment there, just saying that the members that trackers have are just as important, if not more so than the staff/owners of these trackers, so anyone that says its a privilage to be part of one, is talking bollocks, (unless you have fucked up and got banned for a reason).

[mrnobody]

kool story bro.

[Tv Controls you]

privilege- a special advantage or immunity or benefit not enjoyed by all

I feel I enjoy a benefit not enjoyed by all at BCG.

[stoi]

but why, we are nothing special really, no where is, ok we may be "best" in the field, even though i dont really think we are but whatever, but i am not just talking about us, i am talking about sites in general, if you are a really good member, and you will follow the rules, then trackers that do not have you are missing out more than you not having a tracker.

(if that makes sense).

[megabyteme]

I have long argued that actions such as trading violate house rules in the same manner as a home owner asking that guests not put their feet on the coffee table, or try to sleep with the guy's wife, etc.

The difference between the site owner, the staff, its good members, and its bad ones all comes down to amounts of investment- in descending order, as listed.

If I have people over, I am happy that they came (as good guests), but I am not going to announce that these guests ARE all-important. If I want to kick people out, that is far more of a right than someone has to be in my home. However, good hosts seldom go out of their way to throw a party and then simply abuse their guests.

[That1Guy]

Indeed the members are extremely important, but most the time I have seen people say that is when they are talking to someone who pretty much has the thinking that "tracker rules are stupid". So it usually fits.

I know that at the tracker I am at we DEFINITELY appreciate our good members. But at the huge sites I cant say either way really. :shrug: . I would assume that at a tracker with 100,000 members it is more likely for staff to think that any one member is expendable. Compared to a tracker with a couple thousand members at least.

[stoi]

A: i dont really see it as "my house", its just a website at the end of the day, yes it was my idea, i created it, i have put money towards it, but its not really "my house" my house will exist even if me and my family are the only ones in it, "my" tracker wont exist if me and my family are the only ones in it.

B: I dont see what the size of the member base has to do with it, you know the good members, you may not know the bad members in either case.

[megabyteme]

A: i dont really see it as "my house", its just a website at the end of the day, yes it was my idea, i created it, i have put money towards it, but its not really "my house" my house will exist even if me and my family are the only ones in it, "my" tracker wont exist if me and my family are the only ones in it.

But you and your staff have invested more time, energy, planning, face legal "challenges", etc. You are the ones who work hardest to make the "place" nice for everyone. It is you (and your staff) who lose the most if the "place" becomes undesirable.

Honestly, I love the perspective you are expressing- your philosophy is why people want so desperately to get in! Who wouldn't want to go hang out with such a gracious host?

While you make BCG special with your philosophy, other sites can ascribe to different variations. If these barons become too known for being lousy hosts, they end up being used more for utility than seen as a welcoming, warm place to invest their energies. And users do bring an energy/life to a place. You are certainly not wrong, by any means!

The point is, there are different ways to attract people to your home, business, tracker, w/e. It is a two-way street, but someone needs to set the rules, and guests decide how they will respond to their host(s)' rules/attitudes towards them.

[stoi]

lol OK, let me digest that a tad.

I have never once heard a tracker staffer say its a privilage to be in a tracker (they may have but i have never actually heard them) its other members on here that i hear it from all the time when someone has been banned (usually). but if they break the rules, they deserved to be kicked out IMHO, it hasnt really got anything to do with being a privilage really (or a right or whatever), if you break a rule and lets be honest here, 99% of trackers rules are the same so you cant really plead ignorance.

again you are saying guests, nearly all staff on trackers have been "guests", and still are (I have to be careful here not to piss staff off lol) but they are just that, guests on the tracker in question, i have no staff on BCG that started with BCG so in your reckoning they are just guests on the tracker that have been noticed.

lets get back to the opening up thing.

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.

all trackers (well me) is for members to give as much as they take, or at least try (I know its impossible for every single member to have a good ratio) and just play fair and respect us, the problem is, BT is a comodity now, (whether that is the WTAW thread or not is beside the point) and its all about, i HAVE to get in there, even though they dont.

OK going way off topic on that one but like i said, pretty drunk and it it 04:30am here, but another thing i will just touch on.

You hear all the bad crap that gos on, banning etc (bad for the member in question I mean) but you never hear about the good (or very rarely) that happens on these trackers.

lets take Cirno for example, he bans/warns because he cares about the tracker and what mebers do, now me i am far to soft and feel guilty as hell for days if i ban someone, even if they deserver it, but without cirno, it would be chaos, but he does help a lot of members as well, just the vast majority of things that you hear are bad, the good never really comes out, i think of it like the 10 o`clock news in the UK years ago, 25 minutes, of crap then the lst news item would be something good (like someone saving a kitten or some crap) but my point is, you hear a lot of bad, and not enough good.

wow i am going off on tangents here lol will quit there and i think its bed time as well lol

[megabyteme]

Your tangents are always warmly received, stio.

If your thread had simply been about How to be a good host I would not challenge a single word. I absolutely agree with your philosophy of being an "owner" who is humbled by his guests. It is as great a model for home as it is for business, or life for that matter.

Trackers/homes/businesses/individuals who treat guests/friends/associates with differing views face their own problems. BUT they have a right to chose to face these problems.


Yes, staff are guests. However, they have made commitments of time, effort, and certain levels of stress that "regular" guests have not committed to. They deserve additional respect (and dare I say power) for making and meeting these commitments.

Yes, the drama llamas are everywhere. It is never as much fun to say thanks as it is to criticize. It is also not as efficient a use of time to discuss things that are already working properly. Broken ones need to be discussed.


The trading thing is a case of greed. I don't have a solution for that.


Sleep well. I find myself fortunate to only argue against you when you are drunk and I am sober. :D

[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 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_East). Good stuff.

[1000possibleclaws]

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

[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. :happy:

http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-still-king-of-p2p-traffic-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. :happy:

http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-still-king-of-p2p-traffic-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.

[megabyteme]

Except for the fact where torrenting traffic has peaked at a massive 55% of total internet traffic in 2009.

That is one I was not aware of. Fascinating!

I have noticed all of the consumer markets that cater to filesharers (media players, televisions, car stereos) and have questioned the need for 1.5 TB hard drives for $110 and NAS systems that store 5+TB if people were not downloading MASSIVE amounts of copyrighted data.

55% of the internet seems possible, but still AMAZING.

[Quarterquack]

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.

False, again! The number of internet connections isn't increasing as much as the bandwidth used per internet connection. It's been estimated that in 10 years, one house will be using the amount of bandwidth that 10 houses use today.

The bandwidth per household is increasing at a staggering rate.

The lust for private trackers "has definitely reduced" for you and for me. Go to demonoid's invites forum, and it's still active as ever, if not even more so, as more people get introduced to the world of private trackers, and more blogs/websites direct towards them.

The "slight decline" is in overall p2p traffic, which includes things like ares/edonkey etc which are all defunct systems by today's standards; but, if you read the article towards the end, it clearly mentions "The data further shows that BitTorrent’s market-share of P2P traffic is still increasing."


That is one I was not aware of. Fascinating!

I have noticed all of the consumer markets that cater to filesharers (media players, televisions, car stereos) and have questioned the need for 1.5 TB hard drives for $110 and NAS systems that store 5+TB if people were not downloading MASSIVE amounts of copyrighted data.

55% of the internet seems possible, but still AMAZING.

Agreed. The number shocked me at first, but then it came to me as no surprise. I stream youtube videos, talk to my family over skype, and torrent. Those are the three main bandwidth hogs that I use. Of those three, only one (bittorrent) is impossible to compensate, considering I'm downloading material rather than watching disposable video.

[BABBY]

The number of internet connections isn't increasing as much as the bandwidth used per internet connection.

This is 100% false as far as some countries like India is considered, Before 3 years the cost of 256 kbps line here was 1500 irs = 35 usd and this was the basic plan of one of pioneer company of internet provider in India, which was owned by govt.
now due to private sector firms giving internet connection the cost has reduced to 512 kbps at 600 irs = 15 usd
At that time very few people had internet connection (50/1000) and now i see that every house in my vicinity has internet(500/1000).

This fact can be verified by u from any Indian.

I again say that these stats are of non-private tracker most of them, if u deduct non-private trackers stats then i think it will come 10 to 20 % for sure.

I and my whole group of friends used to use torrents on a large scale before 1 year or so, but now we all prefer rapid share most of the time.

Just reading stats and interpreting it in a correct way according to situation is a different thing