How would "You" get good members

[Intr4ns1t]

I have not read everyones answers so this may be a dupe but it is my answer...

To the question in subject line.

My feeling that there is no perfect way, but the best way is via an app process with profile links...Mandatory minimum of 4, imo. And then start looking into as much history as possible...Obviously, looking at account times, stats, usernames, and such...Tedious it is, but the closest thing to letting people in that you don't know as safely as possible. And should they dick you around whether it be trading or cheating you will have links to their other accounts!

Having a specific class of "psuedo" staff to do this helps. It takes some of the burden off your staff members, and I'm sure that you wouldn't have too many problems finding 5 or 10 users at BCG that are well trusted and well placed thata have been there for a long time. I guess the biggest factor would be how many new users you want/need per month. If the sky's the limit on your user limit, then that is moot I guess, but my approach has always been "slow and steady" on our site.

In your case you may want to seriously consider a Game based interview form, whether it be through "recruiters" or an irc channel, or both for that matter. You are a dedicated tracker after all, so it would make sense to see some sort of knowledge about gaming be possesed by potential members.

At the heart of it, I really think it would be hard to have a relatively foolproof method for a site as big as yours. While opening the doors would eliminate alot of trading, they would have to be open for a while for people to be convinced that it's not "worth" something trade wise, and that would do nothing to deal with the cheating problem.

[TakeMS]

i think best method is invite only good members.
and be carefull when invite members so no ones join.
is always hard, but signups not the best option.
i think it.

[SoulEdge01]

I understand the concerns behind this, but a small community will make things move slower.

[lysine]

Ok, I understand, but you are the owner man, lets say I speak with Cirno, how can he decide over you?

from my experience, most staff don't interfere with other staff member's decisions when it comes to banning users.

honestly, neither of them probably care about your account or the problems you got yourself into.

[Villalltheway]

well in all honesty mate, i did not ban you it must have been cirno, so if you want a 2nd chance (which you will not get because you cheated) you will have to speak to him.

You can say all the excuses in the book, but what you fail to grasp is this.

I have been there, and still am.

I used to have a PC with an 11gig hdd, i ran the tracker on that and seeded new XBOX games by myself and on a 25KBs connection.

Now I have the HDD space but my connection is still crap, from 10am to 10pm I have to limit my uploading to 10KBs or I get capped if I upload 1.3gig in that time, and my net slows to a crawl.

I also have to turn my PC off on a night as well.

I am the owner with DB access.

But guess what, I still do not cheat, it just means that instead of a week to get SP it takes me 2 weeks, and instead of 4 days to get a 1:1 on a 360 torrent, it takes me 2-3 weeks.

I have even downloaded these PSP packs, so over 100gig, but i have seeded them till SP and I am still seeding them and will do till i get over a 1 Actual ratio on them in my client, and probably for months after as well.

There is just no excuse for cheating, and sorry but if you got caught, good.

Well said these people always come out with the same excuse of it was my first time, i had problems with my internet etc etc, i have a modurate internet speed and seem to survive with awesome ratios on all the tracker that i am on, even the ones they say u should not join unless u have a seedbox. I swear its just about being patient, if people were a little more patient and not greedy they wouldnt never have a need to cheat.

[SoulEdge01]

I think private torrent trackers need a way to measure the upload speed of potential members.

[integral]

i think best method is invite only good members.

It's not that often that I read such genius, I'll have to sit and contemplate for hours so I can attain that level of understanding.

[pentomato]

Torrent users need to stop stressing over this crap, because it hardly makes a difference. Just open signups and have a user limit and if you find users who really break rules, warn/ban.

You have 2 problems with that though.

Security for the members, anyone can sign up, jump on a torrent, get a list of IPs

Back to the sign up, hit and run, get banned, change IPs, new email, sign up, hit and run, get banned again rinse and repeat.

Also believe it or not, when we used to open, members would just sign up 20-250 times, so when we closed, they had accounts to trade/sell.

In any community you find good and bad people, there is not way you can know who's going to be good, if we could this world would be perfect, but it is not.
How can anyone sign up more than once and not get cought?

[mrnobody]

@ small site it is simple. They've small userbase, within that userbase very few have invite, and if anyone trys to misuse it they'll be caught easy.

@ big site it must be awful dealing with bad apples. If they're open they get loads of traders, cheaters, previously banned members, invite/account sellers, and possibly all scums in the planet. Now if they are closed, the userbase is still big and so is number of invites that are available. Furthermore, these trackers will likely have like 1 staff per 1000 users or even more (OiNK cough OiNK) ever and on top of that the invite system is the easiest one ever (invites upon promotion like). With all this madness, all staffs could spend their entire freetime clearing up the bad apples and it would not be enough.

imo, larger sites need to make a different approach.

1) increase # of staffers. I seen a tracker with 15+ staffers and that is one among many fun part of the tracker. If there are more staffers, they can divide work load among themselves. Like, coders could focus on coding and coding only and the rest could do other stuff like watching over the forum, torrent page, irc etc.

2) make a different approach to invites. regardless of how big a tracker is, imo, everyone should upload if they want higher userclass/ invite. While doing so, bunch might just come to appreciate the tracker more than ever.

3) don't hand out invite to everyone at once. If a site has 20,000 users and if 10,000 are eligible for invites then roll their turn each month like-

2,000 this week
another 2,000 next week and so forth

prolly won't help much if the # are as high as 2,000 but that's just an example.

4) share IPs with other trackers, meaning get IPs from them and give IPs to them. Permanent ban for sellers and cheaters. They are not worth the time.

5) if you are getting tons of bad apples from particular area (like country) save yourself and do a IP range ban. i know you woudn't agree with it though.

Lastly, don't stress to much on invites. If you have done enough precaution then you likely won't get much bad apple as you normall would. If you have not, then you'll get tons of cheaters, traders, invite sellers and filtering them will take you all day.

If someone is selling an invite, hunt them for sure. Name the shame and make an example out of them. But don't waste your time going after each trading report you get...well, unless you have enough manpower to do it. That again brings back to having more staffers.



^ give invites to those that manage to go through all that is listed above. They'll find good members for you. You don't have to go door-to-door recruiting, it's really unnecessary. Just focus on the tracker itself..and once people recognize it as the best those who good members will make in the tracker through friends.


P.S. how many staffs are in BCG btw?

[Tinfish]

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

as i said though you cant keep them open forever. there is always a limit, wether you want 30K or 100K
once thats reached they cannot keep signups open.

not every site simply wants to keep expanding as they get more members.
some are happy with the 25,50,100K limit.
obviously if they expanded forever and ever, then it would work, because the accounts would have no value.