How would "You" get good members

Biggest Problem is that Rarity is more or less in almost everyone's minds . invite-only sites or a site in a WTAW thread are the only ones whih brings a curiosity to them . Thats the way it is almost everywhere sadly .

Personally speaking , open signups is the way to go . Problem of dupe accounts , trading doesnt occur . Rotten Accounts having 0up 0down go away provided there's an auto script . The Rarity Crap messes it all up . UBer-SEcreTZ Trackers thingy works only in promoting the site , not getting good users . Been here a long time to see many trackers opting the "Super-Secret-TRacker!!!!" method to get in curious ppl and then fading away in 3 months .

Good Users will love the Site IRRESPECTIVE whether the site is open signups , is lvl 3124253463536566 or invite-only . The Rotten users will go away and you will have users who will actually value the Site irrespective of any rarity shit. In that way you will have much better Users than closing it alltogther . The Collectors wont be interested since its open signups and their accounts will get deleted . At the start there will be a influx due to the curiosity but eventually the ones interested will be the ones left .The ones who were deleted would probably never come back thinking " hey it was open signups , its ok forget it . i will register later if i need something" . In this way there is more chance of getting better users .

There are Pros and Cons in almost every options mentioned , but personally i feel this is a good solution .

we have integral
little einstein

As I have stated before, I would follow the model of What from the beginning to what happens now.

The first week or two they were open, they would let anyone in on IRC, then they gave invites to members. That opened the floodgates to get what they needed... members.

After that, Im sure plenty of people were weeded out for being "bad" users.

Now step two. IRC interviews. What is in a unique situation becuase that are a dedicated tracker, granted. But this could hold true for an HD site, a music site, a movie only site. (KG has done IRC interviews in the past as well). Interview to see what a person is all about and if you find them satisfatory, invite them... if not... sorry pal.

That would be my personal model from day 1

Best way imo is simple, staff do recruitment threads and / or irc interviews when / if they need new members, that way they decided who they get in, i also prefer to get invited by staff because your account is safer, your not gonna get banned because the guy who invited you traded or something. :)

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Originally Posted by SaviouR

Personally speaking , open signups is the way to go . Problem of dupe accounts , trading doesnt occur . Rotten Accounts having 0up 0down go away provided there's an auto script

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pretty much every single private site has a user limit, when reached the open sign ups would be closed.

now what will happen is, upon closing sign ups (leaving you no honest way in) the dupe accounts etc etc.. now have a value, limit reached so only way in is trade.

the minute any site goes public it is hammered by ppl creating as many accounts as they can, for the inevitable day when sign ups close and make theyre dupe accounts valuable as trade items.

leaving sign ups open will eventually mean you hit your limit, and are either forced to close sign ups or completely revamp your site.
most have a reasonable limit for a reason, what ever that may be.

why become a usefull member of a tracker when you can make a dozen accounts, and simply use them as currency.

sites have often tried open invites, its not like its a new thing.
they know the cost of doing it. thats why its still quite rare, and big news when it happens.

to me at least, its like anything else, you give it a go, accept you will have to tidy up a big mess, and see what happens.

personnaly i expect a lot of tools to sign up so it does not dissapoint me, when ppl who never had access to a private tracker get in, take part in forums, irc etc, jump on the torrents its a great thing to see.

but as for a perfect solution to bringing in good members, the person who comes up with that solution could sell the idea and retire :)

i do not think that as a tracker you can do much, good ppl make good users. bad ppl are bad users, its that simple.

what can you do to get around it ?

these days everyone has a seedbox, user level means little on many sites. some require more than a fat pipe however wich is handy.

but some ppl dont like to post on the trackers, doesnt mean they arent excellent users though.. so its not a simple thing.

you can ask other staff, but if your in a possition where you can get invites, anywhere because staffers speak highly of you,then you wont be very active. merely doing the required upkeep so you dont lose the account through inactivity.

interviews ? well theyre boring, and once one guy knows what answers to go with, the entire net will know. we can all lie, or copy and paste, besides not knowing the difference between 2 file types doesnt mean you wont be a good torrenter.

the best users are the ones that know the basics, stay active and dont have many sites meaning they will actually have a NEED of yours and use it, you know they will leach, seed, bring something to the community.

theyre also the ones on demonid/minninova/TPB, that cant get into private sites in the first place unfortunatly :)

it all basically boils back down to opening sign ups, and dealing with the fallout, because other methods might mean you catch bad users a little quicker, but they involve the same amount of work.
hanging about infront of IRC to hold an interview probably takes more time then checking an ip range to see who was signing up to multiple accounts in the first place.


^^NSK makes good points, especially one why its good to be invited by staff. I know someone i invited myself is going to be treated with a lot more trust than some total unknown from god knows where, that isnt to say that everyone isnt given theyre fair hearing, but im more likely to assume someones telling the truth when i invited them myself, know where they are from, know that they know screwing me on one site will cost them several etc etc.

course the dissadvantage of being invited by staff is messing up will no doubt make them feel all petty and vengefull and get you banned on lots of sites :)

staff do already do that, of course many choose to do it on sites that are invite only to start with.

To be honest there will never a perfect way to give out invites, there will always be bad people and good people, unless u psycially sit down with ever person u invite and moderate what they do on these trackers,u will never know the intentions of what people are planning to do.

Also i dont get this argument at all

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Originally Posted by stoi

1: Giveaways

People that do giveawys on public forums, very well might be bringing in a member that the tracker banned 6 months before,

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This could be the case anytime not just in public giveaways, i mean are people under the illusion that in private giveaway this could not happen.

Well it depends on the question.
How to you get 100% good members? you cant.

But you can do better than the average site, and set your goal to have a high percent of good members.

I am part of a tracker that has a small amount of members, all hand picked out of more private forums, community based of course, that way works but you cant expect anything crazy out of it, most members there are helpful in the forums, most upload torrents even with slow connections and everyone seeds for a shitload of time, people with a seedbox will usually download all new torrents for that day to help the seeding and donations are fair so theres no struggle despite the small amount of users. And how do we expand? The invite system, not automatic, if you reached a certain user class you make a request to staff, only if you already have someone you want to invite, a person you really know so you will never have an unused invite for more than a day or 2.
Of course we can't prevent them from bringing in a bad user, so if they do they won't be able to invite someone again and you ban the invitee. Usually the inviter will bring in someone he can trust.

Now if I were starting my own tracker, i get a lot of uploaders, put up at least 1000-1500 torrents before i open it to the public, then let people register via open signups with no limit.
Let is stick for a year, in the mean time find the really good and helpful users, after a year kick out all the non-helpful ones out which will leave you with no more than 1000-4000 users, then let staff and the very very best users invite other people occasionally.

Instead of looking for good members I would look for completely new in torrents members. Get the ones called noobs the ones that make the silly questions.
I would create a part in the tracker suitable for educating them in the rules of the tracker and the principles of p2p and filesharing
I know there are alot of security issues and risks but if some of them achieve to be part of the main community you'll have the members exactly like you want

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Originally Posted by Tinfish

the minute any site goes public it is hammered by ppl creating as many accounts as they can, for the inevitable day when sign ups close and make theyre dupe accounts valuable as trade items.

leaving sign ups open will eventually mean you hit your limit, and are either forced to close sign ups or completely revamp your site.
most have a reasonable limit for a reason, what ever that may be.

why become a usefull member of a tracker when you can make a dozen accounts, and simply use them as currency.

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How can they use a site as currency when they are signups the whole time ? Thats what i said in my above post , signups eradicate all these problems (Dupe Accounts , Trading etc) go away .

The Thing Many (i didnt say all) SysOP's realize their sites are only popular only till they have a high Rarity across the internet . The Day they open signups forever , i can bet you almost all will just leave the site because as i said , almost all the people (including all the anti-trader forEVER !!!! types) have the level shit in their minds . So an open signup would make a site "worse" in the view of the Sysops and the users becos they all are subconsciously caring about the rarity . Sad but a True Situation around the Bittorrent World .

Its that why we see most of the new sites as open signups to increase the number of memebers and find good ppl while some Sysops do have the Rarity Crap in their back of the mind and hence they plan out accordingly .

Demonoid has to be one of the easiest sites to sign up on, and yet it doesn't lack in ANY sort of activity, so I don't think this rarity is as necessary as you might think, SaviouR