STN was marketed as a new 0day tracker wherein the site was ratio free, and many of the users could, in exchange for bonus points or as a donor, directly request/download scene/DDL/p2p releases. New torrents were uploaded by the truckload, and the pretimes were fairly decent for such a new tracker (http://filenetworks.blogspot.com/200...e-tracker.html). As of such, the hype generated around it was quite generous and it faired a lot better than most new 0day trackers that end up dying due to lack of activity.
At first the site seemed to have a lot of potential, with the only downside being that you needed to donate in order to get scene/ddl requests. No biggie, its just an added perk for donators. When STN began to advertise "lifetime accounts" where for a hefty price of 250 euros one could receive "unlimited requests" and become part of a "special userclass" that got to vote on new staff members, I began to worry. Why is this tracker going to such lengths to get donations?
Now I log in today, to see this posted on the front page:
Quote:
The StN Egalitarian Ethos
Now although this has never been tried before, StN effective immediately is implementing an “Egalitarian Ethos” wherein each member can become an equal sponsor of StN. This is going to be implemented from the top down with no exceptions for the founder/s, staff to the regular user.
The plan is to offer a limited number of sponsorship slots with the potential for each member to adopt a single sponsorship. The more sponsors we have the cheaper it becomes for each sponsor!
The target we have in mind to start is 1700 sponsorships. This means that each sponsor only has to contribute Euro 3 for a 6 month period. (Euro 850 per month.. x 6 months divided by 1700 sponsors). This equals a total of Euro 0.50 per month!
Let’s face it you probably spend more than Euro 3 on a coffee and lunch! And who can’t afford Euro 3 for 6 month sponsorship of StN to ensure the survivability of this ratio-free tracker for the long-term. And best of all, it’s equitable and fair!
As these small amounts are considered micro-payments, we have decided to implement a minimum sponsorship of Euro 3 to avoid issues with paypal, and we will place no limitation on the initial round of sponsorships.
For example: if 3000 sponsors adopt a slot @ Euro 3 at the initial signup offering then everyone would get 10.58 months (Euro 0.28 per month!) And conversely if we get below 1700 then the duration of the sponsorship will lessen. E.g. If only 800 people signup then everyone will get 2.8 months. Still that’s only about E1/month!
So what do you get for being a sponsor? Well the concept behind this is an egalitarian ethos, so you get access to everything. There’s no discrimination based on feature sets belonging to different user classes! Every Sponsor gets…
Access to Requests
No dl slot restrictions
Upload ability
And most importantly each sponsor gets to be part of a unique “ratio-free” private community.
Now isn’t that egalitarian?
Of course, we’re going to still have some user classes but these are just descriptive and merely demonstrate who is a more active member, and to provide some incentive for everyone to continue to seed!
So how’s this all going to be implemented?
To start, we’re going to give you all 14 days to think it all over and reflect on it. At the end of 14 days every user will be placed into the Trial Sponsor user class and from there you have 14 days to consider adopting a sponsorship slot.
Following this 14 days i.e. Trial expiry any accounts that have not adopted a sponsorship slot will be disabled.. and finally 7 days after this the accounts will be pruned permanently if the user has opted not to make a sponsorship adoption of Euro 3.
If we’re oversubscribed i.e. 3000 sponsorships, as mentioned, we’ll leave the subscription slots as-is. In other words no existing registered user will be refused an option to sponsor StN and be part of this unique ratio-free private community.
If we reach our target or over subscribe then the open registrations are closed for good or until such time as they fall below our target of 1700. We thereafter become, as many have requested, a closed private community, so the opportunity to be part of this unique ratio free tracker is LIMITED!
If on the other hand, we have less sponsors than the target 1700 ie open adoption slots we will allow invites and/or open signups to the Trial Sponsor class until we reach a total of 1700 sponsorship adoptions.
The objective is to maintain 1700 adoption slots and become a closed tight-knit community.
Essentially a bunch of bull attached to large words such as "egalitarian" (I didn't post the entire news post but they spend a paragraph defining the meaning of this "sophisticated" word :rolleyes:) and a moral "ethos" to attempt to cover the fact that this is turning into another P2L tracker no better than Vizz.tv.
Where is p2p headed :dabs:
