What do you think of "tracker invite" forums?

I'm just curious what you guys think of tracker invite forums, like TI, TR, whatever. I always see them advertised as a invite forum "built on community", which I feel like a load of crap. I have joined a couple of them from reading blogs and have left with a sour taste in my mouth. Here are some of my thoughts:

1. Single minded thought train, no individual opinion

All the posts I see are "good idea", "good post", "well said", "this is a good post", yadda yadda yadda. Every post is in support of another post, and there never seems to be any actual arguing or speaking out. Every one seems to be kissing each other's ass, and I never really see people really express individual, unique opinions. How do you build a community based only on everyone agreeing?

2. Quality of posts degenerate

Everyone is out for themselves. In every GA post requirement is a must, and it becomes a given in a forum like that that more posts = better reputation. It feels like everyone is in a rat race to build up posts, and I've rarely, if ever see multi sentence/paragraph posts.

3. Quality of members degenerate

The only people that join these places seem to be, well, collectors desperately on the lookout for more invites. They read the blogs and constantly pounce on any invite site to inflate the ranks with more people just purely seeking out to collect trackers as their primary ambition. They seem to be the generic member who can never quite put a sentence together, always seem to go "plz can i has this invite i want it for community thx in advance". There posts are less than useful and it seems like all that's on their mind is getting more invites.

4. Witch hunt against traders

I have seen some of the report threads against traders, and boy are they brutal, especially if a notable member starts the thread. It turns into an all out witch hunt, with almost no regard as to whether the person is actually innocent. I realize that trading is bad for a tracker, but these people take it to the next level. They hunt him down, try to find his IP's, and ask anyone who is in those trackers to report him, in an attempt to get him banned. Maybe this isn't terrible, but what if hes innocent? I saw the other day a topic made saying that the OP "was sorry" for a previous report he made, and that he was mistaken. Another prominent member came in and said that, the members there would be willing to help him in any way, and would try to get him any invite for a site he was banned from. This really exemplifies this "witch hunt aspect". Since it's a given to just believe what someone says to kiss up to them and in order to not speak out, they automatically assume the accused is guilty. And when a thread comes out saying "I'm sorry, I was wrong", it may already be too late. The damage is already done.

5. Staff

It may be wrong to judge people by the quality/spelling/punctuation of their posts, but on many of those sites it just seems like the staff is too lazy to put a basic sentence together. Half the spelling is completely wrong, and the other half of the time I have to read a post 2-3 times just to understand what he was saying. Maybe I shouldn't judge like this, but it makes me really wonder what kind of people run this place. And then I see staff/moderators with signatures such as "Looking for ftn, if you have please help me". Honestly, I feel like that reduces them down to any other member there. Just like the normal members who join the sites, they are just the same, creating/modding a forum just for the sake of "sucking up" and hopefully getting into a dream tracker. Maybe its just me, but I feel like any sort of staff should never be desperately asking for invites like that in their signature.

How do you create a "community" like that?

Thoughts?

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1. Single minded thought train, no individual opinion

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qft.
At tps I was quite distracted after getting minus rep from staff member because of posting something that, at SOME point of view, can be considered as contradicting major community ideas there (however I know it wasn't). Don't wanna to get into further details on that case, but now I don't want to public my personal opinions on global things :)

There are good and bad forums. The new ones that pop lately suck and you can see that in the moment you sign up.

Now, all the points you mentioned are the staffers fault. Nowadays most of them just create a forum to get some invites themselves, and really don't care about anything else.

But if you look at some older forums with a decent staff, you will see the true meaning of "community" or "dedicated member". (well, maybe i'm not only talking only about invite forums, but there's still 1 or 2 good ones, most of the members don't use them to get invites but mainly to chat and have a good time)

P.S: About your 1º point: That's called kissing ass, unfortunately there's more and more members like that :/

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Originally Posted by Rart

I'm just curious what you guys think of tracker invite forums, like TI, TR, whatever. I always see them advertised as a invite forum "built on community", which I feel like a load of crap. I have joined a couple of them from reading blogs and have left with a sour taste in my mouth. Here are some of my thoughts:

1. Single minded thought train, no individual opinion

All the posts I see are "good idea", "good post", "well said", "this is a good post", yadda yadda yadda. Every post is in support of another post, and there never seems to be any actual arguing or speaking out. Every one seems to be kissing each other's ass, and I never really see people really express individual, unique opinions. How do you build a community based only on everyone agreeing?

2. Quality of posts degenerate

Everyone is out for themselves. In every GA post requirement is a must, and it becomes a given in a forum like that that more posts = better reputation. It feels like everyone is in a rat race to build up posts, and I've rarely, if ever see multi sentence/paragraph posts.

3. Quality of members degenerate

The only people that join these places seem to be, well, collectors desperately on the lookout for more invites. They read the blogs and constantly pounce on any invite site to inflate the ranks with more people just purely seeking out to collect trackers as their primary ambition. They seem to be the generic member who can never quite put a sentence together, always seem to go "plz can i has this invite i want it for community thx in advance". There posts are less than useful and it seems like all that's on their mind is getting more invites.

4. Witch hunt against traders

I have seen some of the report threads against traders, and boy are they brutal, especially if a notable member starts the thread. It turns into an all out witch hunt, with almost no regard as to whether the person is actually innocent. I realize that trading is bad for a tracker, but these people take it to the next level. They hunt him down, try to find his IP's, and ask anyone who is in those trackers to report him, in an attempt to get him banned. Maybe this isn't terrible, but what if hes innocent? I saw the other day a topic made saying that the OP "was sorry" for a previous report he made, and that he was mistaken. Another prominent member came in and said that, the members there would be willing to help him in any way, and would try to get him any invite for a site he was banned from. This really exemplifies this "witch hunt aspect". Since it's a given to just believe what someone says to kiss up to them and in order to not speak out, they automatically assume the accused is guilty. And when a thread comes out saying "I'm sorry, I was wrong", it may already be too late. The damage is already done.

5. Staff

It may be wrong to judge people by the quality/spelling/punctuation of their posts, but on many of those sites it just seems like the staff is too lazy to put a basic sentence together. Half the spelling is completely wrong, and the other half of the time I have to read a post 2-3 times just to understand what he was saying. Maybe I shouldn't judge like this, but it makes me really wonder what kind of people run this place. And then I see staff/moderators with signatures such as "Looking for ftn, if you have please help me". Honestly, I feel like that reduces them down to any other member there. Just like the normal members who join the sites, they are just the same, creating/modding a forum just for the sake of "sucking up" and hopefully getting into a dream tracker. Maybe its just me, but I feel like any sort of staff should never be desperately asking for invites like that in their signature.

How do you create a "community" like that?

Thoughts?

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QFT :happy:

i absolutely despise such places, and i've been a part of a few in the past.
Your first point is particularly correct, you couldn't see such discussions as you see here at FST, for example.
But the worst part is that some of those people come criticise FST exactly because of that point of view, when it is clearly a major plus for this site. Like it or not.

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Originally Posted by ultrauploader

Now, all the points you mentioned are the staffers fault. Nowadays most of them just create a forum to get some invites themselves,....kissing ass

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I cleanned that up for you. buddie.

goats ...pop up in my mind...

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Originally Posted by Bad-Day

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Originally Posted by ultrauploader

Now, all the points you mentioned are the staffers fault. Nowadays most of them just create a forum to get some invites themselves,....kissing ass

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I cleanned that up for you. buddie.

goats ...pop up in my mind...

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exactly, goats. though i consider that place where the pirates are in society exactly the same ass kissing place. just the techniques are slightly different.

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Originally Posted by Rart

1. Single minded thought train, no individual opinion

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:yup:....they all are like the same..this is exactly the reason why i don't really like to be at places like TR and TI..and love being at FST:fst:

TR has arrogant Elite members and TI has the most dumbest staff who just go on banning members on those forums....

These sites are just like harming trackers like how Trading harms trackers...Noobs get invited to trackers which they don't really care about/or not interested in their content....
Trackers like TT have more collectors than actual Trancers :pinch:...Users don't even knowing how trance sounds like are there on TT(reason being its a high level tracker).This is all because of forums like TI,TR,etc

I wish i could pm u right know cabalo :D

Ps. the latests request was so corny ........ lol

very-well summarized Rart, you got it.

Most of the so called invite forums are like that. IMO there is only one exeption, TPS.

Other than that, when signing up for such forums, just look at the posts in the non BT parts of them. You'll see very quick how good the forum is.

PS: I don't know what is worse, the ''good post'' posts or the staffers looking for invites (and that being the reason for starting the forum ,lol). There was some romanian forum a while back (that was english speaking, though) that was hosted on a free host (I'm a n00b at these things), solely so that the owner could get a BCG invite.

what's tps?

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Originally Posted by The_Martinator

Most of the so called invite forums are like that. IMO there is only one exeption, TPS.

Other than that, when signing up for such forums, just look at the posts in the non BT parts of them. You'll see very quick how good the forum is.

PS: I don't know what is worse, the ''good post'' posts or the staffers looking for invites (and that being the reason for starting the forum ,lol). There was some romanian forum a while back (that was english speaking, though) that was hosted on a free host (I'm a n00b at these things), solely so that the owner could get a BCG invite.

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maybe you should stop signing up to every invite forum if you feel that way

I've been at T-I(won't say full url,collectors& level traders will invade the place then) but left since I did not feel my opinions regarding trading were exactly the same as theirs, wich they had to be in order to be a member there. Well anyway, I got to see a little of the site before I left by my own and I can say it was not like what you described here above. Many useful suggestions were added and discussed every day, many members helped repping in new people, many helped discovering cheaters/traders etc. There were good topics that you could actually discuss something. There was no witchhunt on traders or anything like that; If you were caught as a trader, you were permabanned from there - finito, nothing more. Mods were a bit hard though, and I'd even say I suspected one of them to be a pure damn collector of trackers but otherwise from that I can't really say there was anything superbad over it.Except for the mod that seemed like a collector(he had ftwr,ftn all those req's going on at the same time) the other mods were very nice and helpful and rarely asked for invites and also gave away very many invites, saw one mod who gave 12 SCC and one who gave over 5 SCT. And it wasn't just giveaways to trackers where you can even get from here, some of them were truly amazing in "Trusted" section, can't think how it was in the VIP part. Anyway, there's one big thing I hate about it: People don't check on their invitees enough! People handed out invites just for the sake of reputation boxes(green boxes), some even put SCC GAs in the lowest section available in the forum just for the sake of reputation, there's no other reason to put it there really.

I think they're both good and bad. My opinion is split.

And the request part of the forum isn't cloaked up with newbies asking for ftn,ftwr and e****...there's no rules about who can req what but people feel what they can req. there's a few ftn requests from noobies and unfortunely when i was there you werent allowed to tell them that they will in no world in the universe get an invite to that place when you're a fresh newbie, dont know if it changed

Great thread rart.. Very nice views as well

One thing that I never liked about the Goats, is that you couldn't have a open minded discussion. Every one posted with intentions to look good infront of their friends and mostly never sticked to the topic(the kissing ass and invite hopes might have had somethign to do with that.)

Another thing I didn't like about them was the hostility. When I first joined I had a shitstorm of hate coming my way.(and I wasnt the only one. every new member suffered from the same problem)
These guys didn't like the new members at all. I think that was because they wanted a small communtiy where everyone agreed with eachother's opinions. They pictured themselves high-class thinkers, so they wanted to form the perfect forum where there's only l33t members.

Cabalo, what did they say? "We have decided that a few members don't have the capability and intelligence to hang with us, so we are thinking of a forum cleanup"...lmaoo

The reality is that these guys are not big thinkers or productive posters at all. they spend 90% of their time making goat jokes and proposing to fuck and suck eachother.. it's somewhat scary. At first i thought that it was all jokes, but when such behaviour lasts for months, you start to suspect something

Anyway enough with describing Cfs.. My overall opinion on invite forums is that they're based on artificiality. You can't even have a decent convo or warm up with someone without them asking you for a ftn invite 5 minutes later

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Originally Posted by TrueSounds

maybe you should stop signing up to every invite forum if you feel that way

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What's wrong with trying to see what the newest invite forum is like? You never know, maybe a great one will emerge some day. And I don't sign up to every new one, just to those that get good comments on the public blogs. :whistling

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Originally Posted by The_Martinator

[

What's wrong with trying to see what the newest invite forum is like? You never know, maybe a great one will emerge some day. And I don't sign up to every new one, just to those that get good comments on the public blogs. :whistling

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In your case what is the point? Why not jsut post in the forums that you have or better yet find a forum that's about something that interests you where you don't always have the worry in the back of your mind that the person you are talking to has some hidden agenda.

If I remember correctly a lot of those invite forums used to allow trading in the past, so even if they don't now you still have the kind of people there that only care about invites. I would say TPS is the only invite forum where you can have real discussion, I haven't noticed any sucking up or anything.

I apologize for interrupting the discussion but how many of you know about ********. This is an invite-forum which sells accounts to members for 15$ each, and the funny thing about it is that they don't allow traders in their community.. look how fuckud up the politics of the bt have became. Everything is starting to became so false and interest-based

@ ablo... llllllolllllll you just called them faggots lol

right on!

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Originally Posted by th0r

what's tps?

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well?

Cabalo, but weren't you an active member at CFS? What changed your mind?

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Originally Posted by th0r

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Originally Posted by th0r

what's tps?

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well?

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http://filesh are freak.com/2009/04/28/thepirat esociety-opens-regist ration-for-a-lim ited-time/

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Originally Posted by Albo Da Kid

I apologize for interrupting the discussion but how many of you know about ********. This is an invite-forum which sells accounts to members for 15$ each, and the funny thing about it is that they don't allow traders in their community.. look how fuckud up the politics of the bt have became. Everything is starting to became so false and interest-based

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yeah, and if you pay extra, you can become a "vip" there. :01: still, the title or the membership there don't entitle no one for the invites to anywhere and if they'll find out the trading history, the person will likely to be banned. but for other things.. i pointed at the guy who asked for a new mv invite when he found out himself disabled at the tracker for whatever reason. they just closed the thread. no problem, such kind of users are okaaaay :) (maybe as long as they're vips). still, the site don't hold the breath trying to catch any site reps opinions so even that i can't say that the forums are good etc, there's less feelings of being at the jailhouse yard while big brother is watching you like at tps. there's no ideal forum, and the only criteria is how many decent folks are there and what they're posting... if markup master could be active, i really think that ic could stay unbeatable...

Isn't markupmaster like 14 or something?

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Originally Posted by IdolEyes787

Isn't markupmaster like 14 or something?

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21 years old.

That's like 14.

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Originally Posted by IdolEyes787

That's like 14.

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na, 14 years old, Cinephilia can be his grandfather.

[Ola, ciné]

Sometime in january he was so desperate that he went to as far as attempting to barter waffles(the only site that he appeared to hold invites on) for an scT invite.1 month later,he edits the trade post with the usual my uncle's aunt's dog did it bs.I'd buy this bull by the way but its too much of a coincidence that his friend's girlfriend was also looking for sct at the same time that he was and just like him,happened to have had waffles invites,only that her's were for trade.Two months on,he decides to completely ditch this place having realised that he is ambitious but lacks the balls to stand up to his post history(i swear,themartinator is a rookie if we were to match him to this guy on the ass-kissing meter).Anyways,his skills worked just like he thought they would.Today he's staffing one of the biggest invite pusher forums out there and he's probably on every site he'd ever wanted to be on and maybe more.If i was drunk enough to lay his name,guys that have come across him probably won't believe me coz he is that good at manipulation,he's probably read alot of those books and perhaps did some social engineering as well coz am yet to come across anyone as good as him.

Its a little weird though coz I somehow do respect this guy for how he's played.I can almost compare it to the cred spx gets from me for how he keeps playing the scene.
He knew what he wanted,drafted a plan and then let the pros love him.

If you don't know who am talking bout then don't bother asking coz I won't tell ya(he already won my heart for how he played BT).It takes three nicks to unmask him by the way.

Ooh 3 nicks...and manipulation!

You had me thinking I wasn't on the intarwebz for a sec.

http://i28.tinypic.com/14wy32c.jpg
this is me. :D lol

lol










[Ola, yoann]

The only invite forum that I ever took an interest in was (IZ) before they shut. It was a private, non-trader site where the admins had to pre-approve all new members. Staff as well as members kept a verrry keen eye out for any traders...which were drawn and quartered upon discovery. :shifty:
Overall it was a great place cuz of the active forums, a very active shout box and above all some of the most genuinely nice people I've ever come across in P2P over the last 8 years. Tho the site is no more, I still bs with the peeps from there all the time around the irc channels.
As for open public invite forums that allow trading...just not my cup of tea to put it lightly, very lightly.
I know there's several private, non-trader invite forums around now...maybe it's time I have a look/see and ask around..try and find one I like.

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Originally Posted by Bad-Day

http://i28.tinypic.com/14wy32c.jpg
this is me. :D lol

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Witch won?

Idol :) I will never tell!!!

You don't have to...your avatar already has. :pinch:

I only browsed the briefly since I'm a bit low on time atm, so I may be reiterating what was already said, sorry about that.

Basically, invite forums were opened by morons seeking invites for themselves, and are used by morons seeking invites for themselves. There is no justification, per se, for the existence of invite forums other than for the purpose of swapping invites/accounts amongst their members/staffers, under the pretense of building a "community".

Some of these sites may be worse than others, others may be keeping a facade of playing nice and by the rules, but ultimately they are all damaging the community. Some of the staffers of these forums will tell you they opened up to contribute to the community - well, I say if you want to help the community go and start your own tracker, don't pimp other people's work.

Ive been around a few of them. I find it odd that some dont alow trading, but its ok to give an invite to a complete stranger based on screenshots and a speedtest? Is it so easy?

Another site i found and was discusted was the one selling invites.
If trackers had the man power and tim to hunt these guys it would be great. Try and go undercover , buy the invite and delete the seller. And go up the invite tree and red flag most if not all.

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Originally Posted by pro267

I only browsed the briefly since I'm a bit low on time atm, so I may be reiterating what was already said, sorry about that.

Basically, invite forums were opened by morons seeking invites for themselves, and are used by morons seeking invites for themselves. There is no justification, per se, for the existence of invite forums other than for the purpose of swapping invites/accounts amongst their members/staffers, under the pretense of building a "community".

Some of these sites may be worse than others, others may be keeping a facade of playing nice and by the rules, but ultimately they are all damaging the community. Some of the staffers of these forums will tell you they opened up to contribute to the community - well, I say if you want to help the community go and start your own tracker, don't pimp other people's work.

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Thank God this isn't an invite forum.Seriously I think that more invites get given out randomly on the web than get given out here anymore.
And you don't get invited any place from being staff here which is the way it should be.

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Originally Posted by IdolEyes787

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Originally Posted by The_Martinator

[

What's wrong with trying to see what the newest invite forum is like? You never know, maybe a great one will emerge some day. And I don't sign up to every new one, just to those that get good comments on the public blogs. :whistling

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In your case what is the point? Why not jsut post in the forums that you have or better yet find a forum that's about something that interests you where you don't always have the worry in the back of your mind that the person you are talking to has some hidden agenda.

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Aha, but I like weeding out people with a hidden agenda. And most of all there are a lot of good people out there that have to be guided. I'm not saying I know everything, but I do know that you can get anywhere by being as nice as you are in RL (no more) and I have some invites. I think that this hidden agenda thing seems to be spreading like a disease. It's almost like you need to do it. I mean even I get fan mail, that's so obviously fake that I wanna puke. No kidding. And who the hell am I. Let's face it, in the world of BT I'm noone.

I used to be on IZ cause most of its staffers were my mates, but I got bored and started concentrating on trackers forums. I ve got into sdbits from TPS(i think), but I have less than 10 posts for sure overthere. The thing that bothers me most is the poor English skills of most of the regular users and the fact that they post 30 times a day in "Playing now" thread...