What makes a Private Tracker popular?

[hof]

content for the most part. Then speed and retention

[TraLaLa]

The smaller the chances to get in the popular the tracker it is, sadly but its reality
I remember in the beginning when i started torrenting, i just wanted to download stuff, when i join TL,thx to fst, it was the biggest achievement and it remained the nr 1 tracker i use.
Now people want what they cant get, to be a part of a tracker,simply to have it bcz the content its pretty much the same, i think a lot of low level trackers has more torrent activity or forum posts than a h33t one but sadly this doesnt count anymore

[kallieb]

What makes a site popular with its members...... hmmmmm........Your poll options are too narrow for me because it is a combination of many factors.

Tracker content is fine - but what I like is when the site has amazing request fillers/uploaders. 0day comes in to most sites, that is not as important to me. What matters instead is that I know I (or anyone else who requests) can request almost any file even the most obscure and it will be on the tracker in no time.

Forum activity/content - Lots of sites are loaded with spam and even the best of them can't get around the tonnage of fluff posts. I enjoy a site where there exists a core element within the forum where I know that interesting discussion emerges in certain threads all the time. As well, the help section gets an immediate and accurate response whenever someone is stuck and needs to know how to get something to work (be it software, or buying new hardware, etc). Help sections that are not filled with thread trolls is most refreshing

Staff/Site Design options - The running and framework of a site is often overlooked in terms of its importance; but no matter how feature-rich a site is, it won't matter much and only serve to be a disappointment if the staff behind it either don't maintain it, or are a bunch of immature asshats. When staff set the example by being the most obnoxious forum trolls of all, or don't intervene and set things right when it should, what next right?

Speed, pre-times - all that stuff is not as important to me, but it is to many others so some effort needs to go in to giving decent speeds and most sites do.

What catches my eye are sites that are not pure ratio-driven. If a site wants activity, and diversity of content, creativity is needed in how members can maintain their ratio, or better yet, that they really don't have a ratio-system at all.

So..... you put a package together of a site like ^^ than that will hold my interest far more than just a site that has 'good speed' or 'good content'.

[anon]

Good content, speeds and retention, I guess. Pretimes and forums are of secondary importance for me.

And most important, it must have something giving it a cut above the rest of the sites of its same category.

[cappy]

1) community
2) friendly staff
3) rare content
in my opinion these 3 r must for a private tracker

[mindlock]

Number 1 is content for me. If a tracker does not have what I need, there's not need for me to use the tracker. Number 2, the community. I am a member of certain trackers that I have downloaded anything in months from, but I keep going to the site mainly because of the forum. They community posts interesting and hysterical threads that keep me coming back. Number 3, design. I have joined some trackers and immediately never went back to them because I did not like the design of the tracker. It usually has to do with the visual concept of the tracker and the cumbersome use of the tracker's feature that turns me off.

[1080HD]

Number 1 is content for me. If a tracker does not have what I need, there's not need for me to use the tracker. Number 2, the community. I am a member of certain trackers that I have downloaded anything in months from, but I keep going to the site mainly because of the forum. They community posts interesting and hysterical threads that keep me coming back. Number 3, design. I have joined some trackers and immediately never went back to them because I did not like the design of the tracker. It usually has to do with the visual concept of the tracker and the cumbersome use of the tracker's feature that turns me off.

that is mainly the things i would cover, the content is always king and secondly for me the speeds if you can get both right you have yourself a epic site. To put the icing on the cake add a sex styled theme and you have yourself a winner!

[Aristocles]

1)Content
2)Retention
3)Speed
4)Rules
5)Community
"Eliteness" and "Media hype" mean nil.

[tippertime]

content first and foremost...if I continually have to go to another site to get the content I want, whats the point of me spending my time in their community? Granted there are a lot of people who downloaded from newsgroups and just like to hang out in torrent sites forums and irc

but I think for the vast majority content is king

[IdolEyes787]

Why do I think certain trackers are more popular than others?( which btw might be in fact totally opposite to why they really are) in order.
1.Reputation( real or imagined)/or more simply- being aware it exists
Contrary to the skewed perception many people have here most bt users don't know or don't care about every tracker under the sun .They hear the name TL someplace .They read it's "good" .They join and that sole membership for a majority of people is more than enough.End story.
2.Size ( which usually addresses at least in part, speed/retention/ease of seeding )also interconnected to the first point.
3.Ease of actually getting into it .Self explanatory .Some sites are "less popular " by design.
4. Content . Here we start getting into something past the "casual user " so numbers effected are clearly not going to be as great.
5. Design .Again process of diminishing returns .The more "involved" you are the more you are likely to care about such things.

and then the rest( however important they are or not in reality )follow
staff,leetness,etc.

Personally however if the question was why do I prefer certain trackers over others the order would be something like ...
The people associated with it .Whether that means "community" or staff or whatever.Doesn't even have to do with activity on forums or irc(not that I'd know about irc)Really just a certain feeling that everyone is there because they actually care about the content and respect the fact that not everyone else there is necessarily the same . This being opposed to being a member(or staff) in some juvenile attempt at proving themselves better than anyone else or as some hopeful stepping stone to whatever next level they wish to attain..
I guess I illogically choose trackers by who I prefer to associate with .
Seriously I can get movies/games/music at the store or even do without.At the end of the day I want to feel good about what I'm doing.

After that content and retention and to a much lesser degree design and then to me at least none of the other things matter at all( not saying that they never did btw.Live and learn like).