A question for btt tracker 'community' seekers

[1000possibleclaws]

How important is the community aspect of private trackers for you? My view on torrenting is that people torrent to get files, and then discover private trackers as a means to get specialized material (be it hq music, hard-to-find movies, niche tv shows, and what not), for increased security and privacy, or maybe to get 0day files very fast (especially if public sites like TPB are being throttled by their ISP/university).

It seems that since most of these niche sites are available easily enough, more and more torrenters are being drawn to trackers that stress community and exclusivity. Are you one of these torrenters? If so, are you in/trying to get in these sites because you are bored, or because you want an online community that includes a tracker (albeit it being practical or not).

I assume these trackers are attracting so much appeal because people already have easy access to all the data they need and feel the need to keep looking for more interesting sites, but there are probably other reasons that I'm just overlooking. I have friends that are very involved in these kinds of sites and I'm sure alot of you guys are as well. Please share why these sites are so appealing.

[piratebot]

And why not just join regular, non-file sharing related forums that are relevant to your interests?

[ovisan]

I just look at it this way: the content is 90% the same in any tracker, the only thing that is different is the community.This means this only the community is special and not the tracker. There are a few places I visit every day not only looking for something to download but see what is new in forums, who is looking for an answer, to check new and interesting sites and see others opinion about things that I am interested in. I even like the spamming threads.
And again a tracker is 10 times more sexy for an user if hes got friends in there. For me this is the 1st thing that I choose now before I sign up to a new tracker. But also if the content is a perfect 10 I will try my best to make a couple of friends in their irc channel to make sure that I will happily come back again.
If we will all do that we will stop this mad chase after high lever trackers and will learn to appreciate the tracker we are already in and the communities we already belong!

LOVE, OvISaN

[stoi]

Well the thing that i do not really understand is.

lets say a site has 3,000 members, but they stress community, but only 100 of their members may be active in the community, forums and IRC.

But a site with 30,000 members, maybe have 3000 members in the community, forums and IRC but they are not a Community tracker.

My mind boggles with that i am afraid lol

the other thing is as well, a lot of it is just spam for the sake of spam, takes a long time to find a good thread, in most trackers.

[Something Else]

I don't see much use in 'community' trackers myself. It's content that matters more than anything in my opinion. I use usenet for any scene stuff so have no need for 0day or community 0day trackers in terms of content.

[brightsid]

Community is not only being active in forums and IRC.
For me a great community is a tracker with members (no diff if they are 10 or 10000) that spent time and effort for example to write a guide for x264 encoding or proper vinyl ripping. A tracker with 50 members using their imagination to create a christmas banner is more community than the one that gathered a few thousand in the IRC waiting for upload credit

[stoi]

I think what you will also find as well, trackers that have very rarely opened, or in some cases, never opened, have 99% of the userbase that can speak English (if it is an English speaking tracker)

those with lots of members, have members from all over the world, that cant speak a word of English.

So the Community aspect can suffer in that respect on the big trackers, because most of the members, cant join in because they cant speak the language.

[Artemis]

the other thing is as well, a lot of it is just spam for the sake of spam, takes a long time to find a good thread, in most trackers.

This is actually the most true thing stated here, in many cases it is the same group of posters on multiple sites, and there are only so many 'rate that chick' 'would you hit that?' 'rate these boobs' threads you can take before your brain turns to mush.
There are some long established trackers which have a close knit group of members that differ from the others, but they are the exception rather than the rule, and we have seen lately new trackers start up and within a week have an 'awesome community'. I think in many cases the WTAW thread skews peoples perceptions and many curious people who want a tracker simply because it seems unattainable will deal the community card simply to defend that curiosity.
Tracker staff actually make much of the 'atmosphere' to do with a tracker, i.e. what posts are allowed what aren't, what subjects are discussed or on the torrent side of the tracker what content is allowed and what isn't. So it is the 'atmosphere' that is the difference, but even then in many cases the differences are only minor, you either like the trackers content and if you are a poster/irc junkie enjoy that side or you don't, simple.
Many I think that seek the highly rated 'community' trackers are greatly disappointed when they gain membership since the emphasis isn't on blazingly quick 0day file speeds or even on the latest content. Many are labeled 'lame' by those who seek them mistakenly thinking they are some kind of topsite, only to find more emphasis on the forum than the tracker

[Albo Da Kid]

I don't see much use in 'community' trackers myself. It's content that matters more than anything in my opinion. I use usenet for any scene stuff so have no need for 0day or community 0day trackers in terms of content.

I didn't expect that from you..
Isn't it ironic to say so, when your own site is thriving on the "community" aspect??
If you make a poll and ask "what do you use iTS for, for content or community??", I grantee you more than 70% will choose community instead of content.
And if you make another poll and ask "Is the content decent in iTS, Yes or NO", i bet......lol i don't think you want to create the second poll.

@regarding the thread. I think the "community" excuse is used mostly by collectors. They need to find new excuses, therefore they say whatever makes sense to most.
There's numerous amounts of private bittorrent communities for that purpose, which are 10x more active than any "community" tracker.

[stoi]

many I think that seek the highly rated 'community' trackers are greatly disappointed when they gain membership since the emphasis isn't on blazingly quick 0day file speeds or even on the latest content. Many are labeled 'lame' by those who seek them mistakenly thinking they are some kind of topsite, only to find more emphasis on the forum than the tracker

Ok I love forums, as you can see from my post count here lol and with the post count on my site, but when I joined 2 trackers that were supposed to be community trackers,

A: I struggled to post anything, because there was no posts that interested me at all.

B: I was scared to post incase I got shouted down, as being a "NEW" member, and what you say does not have anything to do with here (i seen that happen to a few new members.)

C: If I was after porn links great, but we have already had this out in another thread lol

D: if i was after FTP links that only had stuff from a year ago, great

On BCG i like to mark all posts as read, open up all forums, wait 10 minutes, refresh, and usually (depending on the time of day, 5am GMT its dead, but then so is this place) and see what new posts/threads there are.

usually a hell of a lot, but on those sites, it seemed to be a few posts every 24 hours, and most were nonsensicle at that lol

Dont know, to me they were supposed to be about community, to me they were not very good at it, and they did not have the members to be a tracker in all due respects, so i can understand members being disapointed, I joined them for the forums, not the tracker, and I was still dissapointed, not what i was expecting at all.