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History, they say, is written by the victors. Such is the ironic case for a new forum not yet a month old and already all over the torrent community in news. Well, if all press is good press, then we are to be richly favored.
Where does one begin after such an interesting few days? I suppose I should begin at the beginning. Three weeks ago, you were greeted with these simple words: We intend to be different. Very different.
There is another saying, and that is: “Truer words have never been spoken.”
But I said more than this, and those words bear repeating for they are germane to all that which follows:
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But, I have noticed something very different about trackers. Something exclusive, as club for the few and their friends. Or places so filled with secrets that they barely notice their members. And there were many trackers did not welcome me at all. They did not want some outsider to offer up any ideas. Some warmed up to me, in time, others became directly hostile. Yet on them all, from the most experienced to the least, I have met great people, just like anywhere else, with the same desire and vision. A place where such attitudes of indifference or superiority did not exist.
That is my goal. My purpose here. A community where the newest person is treated with respect, kindness and is brought from ignorance into knowledge. Where the oldest stalwart is not forgotten nor taken advantage of. Where you are able to share, make friends and enjoy yourself within a community which values your unique person and abilities.
This is what I hope that you will not only find here, but also become an active part in helping us to achieve. The Golden Rule applies here to all things. I do not forget that I was once not very long ago on the outside looking in and I will never forget it.
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I have not forgotten. While I wished I could have posted everything that has happened as it was happening and while I wished I could have spoken to each and every one of you, I am but one, and such was just not the case.
So let me just take them one at a time:
We have had some staff changes and resignations. We are filling those roles and moving forward. Why? What happened? Those are the questions and while there may be many answers and many points of view, I will share only mine and let anyone else have their say in the Towne Cryer.
We are the newest Mac/Apple tracker. But we are not BrokenStones, nor did we even intend to be. Henry himself even said that he did not wish to see a clone or a BS2. And such was never our goal.
But there was existing, trained, competent staff from BS looking for a new home and so we tried to make it fit and tried to make it work. But from the very beginning, I could tell that it would not. The end was not unexpected, though it was untimely and unplanned. And this is the sadness I share with many. It is a loss and it came at a terrible time. Such is the nature of life.
I speak no ill will to any of those folks as they go their ways. None have served with anything but the finest even until they could serve no more in their own comfort. Go in peace my friends. But it is not without comfort to know that not all have taken this path, several remain and to them and for them I express my gratitude.
But, what is it that begat discomfort? It is the elitist mentality. It does not die easy. And the first signs of it came long before they were evident to the general consciousness. It began with the invites. I gave everyone 25 and said you could use them for 2 weeks. But within a week, voices in the staff urged me to end them and close them and set you all to 1.
Not wishing a war in the 8th day, I conceded. I could regret it, but it is best to acknowledge the past and then leave it in the past, only learning from the error. To that end, we then set up and invite room. Again, this was not my idea and I felt it flew in the face of the culture I sought to create. So I demoted some people from it, and promoted others and trained them to be as open and gentle as I could.
My goal was, that if I could not persuade the staff to be more open with the invites, I would at least give new folks a much easier pass than any other site with the same practice. A compromise to be sure, but it was better than a confrontation.
This same appeasement was also going on behind my back and I was unawares until the day of the end. My compromises were not seen as such, but as that I always had to have my way and that I was closed minded to any other. Harsh to hear. Hurtful to read. Unbelievable when I had compromised so much.
It was a cultural divide that I was unable to reconcile. It is a culture that I seek to destroy, not fix, not ever again with to compromise. When I say the little guy is just as good as anyone else, by God I mean it and will back it with force.
So that leads us to the next issue: The pejorative lie known as “pay to leech.” I do not want to ever hear that saying again. It is elitist, snobbish, and insulting. We all pay to leech. We pay with our time, we pay with our edits, we pay with our uploads, we pay with our forum posts, we pay with our helping of others, we pay and we pay and everyone pays what they are able and willing. And that goes for folks who may someday make a donation of a monetary nature.
For the love of money is the root of every evil. And the evils which have pressed against the doors, were of this very spirit.
So let me set the record completely straight:
How does a website work? Well, someone has to buy the name, set up on a server, and then keep it running. That costs money. So far, yours truly has footed the bills. And while they are not cheap, they are not overwhelming. We could go on as a site of 12,000 users and I could pretty much afford it all myself, and nothing would change.
But, then, I am just not willing to do that. I am not willing to pay for it for my own little kingdom and the glory and the pain, just because. No, I am not. I am only willing to do it, if I am able to make this something much more. Nothing short of the largest, most incredible, cohesive and incredible Mac/Apple community the web has ever seen.
I am not kidding. I look at the great people here and I know we can do it. We can do it better than all the other sites. Better news, better blogs, better hackers, better trackers, better chat, better forums. We can all come together and build it, because, where I sit here, at the top, I will empower you to succeed. You have seen it. We change forums for Fora, we add classes, we want to change, we want to grow. We want to listen and we want to act.
But, there are limits. We will not listen to elitism. We will not act on malice. For several days, we had some former members who took advantage of that open spirit of kindness and of tolerance. That is the price of liberty, you sometimes have to allow the bad to extinguish itself. And I am sorry for those who had to see it all and wonder about the silence. I hope, that while it may have been difficult, you will have seen that I do not crush those who disagree. I let them speak, even if rudely and I send them on their way if they remain unpersuaded.
So, the issue of donations. Three parts to it actually. Which is why some are no doubt confused. I am under no delusion that I can fully explain it to all parties in such a brief span, so I will only hit the basics and ask that it suffice.
First, we will, one day, sooner than later, ask for donations. But these donations we hope will do far more than just pay the basic costs of a server for a small community. We hope they will allow us to grow exponentially and aggressively. We hope they will allow us to recode the entire structure of the site and the tracker and all the additions I have discussed. We hope that you will give generously and help to build something which will shine across the entire realm of not only the Mac/Apple world, but the net itself.
We are still discussing the mechanics of what to do for rewards of donors. And by that I mean more than a star by your name or a title. Because the goal is to encourage activity across the site and the development of the community. And to that end, we intend to use every idea which works. Upload credits. Bonus points. Members trading points. Invites. Bounties. A real and detailed ratio/points economy. And there is no limit to it. Many ideas are out there and I encourage you to think of more. The issue is far bigger than just I donated 10 bucks and got some credit. We want those credits to do more than just a simple ratio boost.
I regret that the issue is so controversial in some circles, but I must be candid and direct. If you do not support an ratio or credit economy… If you cling to the theory than only seeding matters and anything else is somehow a sacrilegious offense: Go now. Leave. Sign out and I mean it, go. That is elitism and there is no more of it. But do it with dignity. Do not make a point or flame out in glory. Just go in peace.
And that settles 1 of the 3. The next issue isn’t as big of a deal, but because of the first, it has raised more questions that answers. So here we go.
How much money does a tracker raise and what happens with it all?
Heck, three weeks ago, I didn’t know. Not a clue. I figured it made some to help with the costs and that was it. Never crossed my mind. It was not until I began to have discussions with people who run other never to be named trackers, that I saw the real picture. And I was scared to death!
I am not scared to run a tracker. I am frightened beyond words to cheat on taxes, taking money and not accounting for it. The RIAA and MPAA and other such jerks, do not have any leg to stand on when it comes to trackers. They only threaten and harass people. The IRS and whatever they are called in other nations? Those dudes play for real. They take your house and they put you in prison.
So, the real question is, how do you ask for money and not get into trouble? There are only two ways. Someone reports it, somehow, somewhere, or no one reports it at all.
I was encouraged – and I should use a word much more aggressive – to go the “hide it and here is how” route. I thought about it, and realized. I can’t do it that way. I just can’t play that game. It is not illegal to run a site utilizing peer to peer technology. To hide, launder, or evade taxation is a serious, outright, big no no.
I will not do that. So the only option is then for someone to report it all. If it is $500 or $5,000. Someone has to report it and that someone is liable. Well, in the USA, we have that someone: It’s called the non profit act. A corporation is a person. A corporation can do all the things a person can do. And a corporation assumes all the liability for anything it does. So, the answer is simple. File one, and let it raise money, pay bills and then you just do the people things on the community.
So that is the plan. When we take donations, sooner than later. You will not give to me or any staff but to a third party independent non profit corporation that is fully legal and legit. And since we won’t come close to raising the kind of money which will require any sort of filing, except a total in and a total out, your names will never be made public and if in court it ever came out, you have donated to an independent group not a tracker.
If you donate to any other tracker, and they get busted for evading taxes? Your donation is pretty much directly tied to your tracker activities. Not so with us. We will have the community and the tracker and the corporation 3 different and 3 separate entities, related only by a bunch of hash numbers that magically float across the unlogged electroverse.
This is 100 times more anonymous and more legal and thus safer for our members than sending your donation to some other site who will not tell you how much, from whom or to whom if you asked. Go ahead and ask. See what answer you get from them. Once we have the system up, the corporation, not any individual, will pay for the needs and growth of the community.
So, really, how much are we talking about? I have no idea yet. We have 12,000 members. If 5% give one time and the smallest amount, we would have $6,000.00. That is enough to buy one good server, hosting for a year in a very secure location, never grow, and be just a small community with 9,000 seeders and few leechers. I hope we do better than this. I hope we can afford 2 servers or 3. I hope we can have 100MB or 1GB and not 10MB for our bandwidth.
But it is really up to you. It is up to the members, to decide if they want to fund such a vision and such growth and to build the community that no one has yet to build. I do not really know what will happen. But I have come this far though this very dark night. I am here to see the dawn. I hope you are as well.
And the last part is? Why the fuss? I would really like to tell you I know why. But I have only my wild half informed facts and my gut instincts. But I think it is FUD.
Fear, uncertainty and doubt. It is easier to destroy what you fear and do not understand than it is to create it. And I would like to give the benefit of the doubt to those who ran in fear, posted in uncertainty and screamed of their doubt. What else can I do? What else is there but grace? I know my own heart and it was hurt and angry and betrayed by all those who I thought could see the simplest of truths. But, then, we are all so human. So, I cannot go there. I cannot give in. And can do nothing but stand and speak the truth and let the past fall upon it self and then let the dead bury their dead, and speak of it no more.
For the future, we have many more announcements soon. And I know that one post cannot cover it all. This is a promise fulfilled, a post which could not wait another day.
Some things which you may notice and of which I will say more when the time is right: We will soon have a new skin! We are on a new chat server. We have new ranks, new classes and new staff. All these and more will be announced throughout the week.
We are headed to the future. And I cannot promise the ride will always be smooth, but I didn't name this “the eye of the storm” in vain. And the tempest which whirls about us is in constant motion. We can find the peace within, if we build it. And if we build it, they will come: The new and yes, even some of the old. And we will welcome them home, with love, forgiveness and grace.
PAX
Rachel Faith
