Is it possible to have such higher server cost?

[TONiC]

remember when that Mac tracker was going to do it, declare everything (and pay taxes etc) the owner got hounded out.

VortexNetwork was going to become P2L if I recall, ofcourse it got hounded out.

Stoi, the answer is very simple: Close donations, let whatever funds you have get low, re-open donations. As you said, you can't put "I run a BT tracker" on a CV, but there's a far more ethical reason for this - BT is a hobby, not a business. Shame many BT admins forget that. Shame many regular users forget that too.

[stoi]

if i closed donations we wouldnt last a month, so its not really that simple.

Ok this isnt a sob story or a plea or anything shite like that, we have 40,000 members, between 200-250 donate every month, but that is any amount, so just to get the star, so whats that about 0.6% of the memberbase donate, and members of other trackers wonder why tracker admins send out mass PMs every other week asking for donations (which i have never done btw in 7 years of running the tracker).

its definately not as lucrative as some on here make it out to be, thats for sure.

[TONiC]

its definately not a lucrative as some on here make it out to be, thats for sure.

Fortunatly transparency would end this argument, either in my favour or yours. Unfortunately transparency isn't something thats high on every admin's agenda.

[stoi]

well if you dont trust any admins either

dont donate, after all no one is forcing you to
dont login for a few months, or delete your account/s
get out of BT altogether
make your own tracker and be as transparent as you want to be.

tbh you just have to see this thread on why admins dont say shite all, if they do its,

you are paying too much
go here instead
lieing bastards
making a profit
scum of the earth

etc etc

[TONiC]

tbh you just have to see this thread on why admins dont say shite all, if they do its,

you are paying too much
go here instead
lieing bastards
making a profit
scum of the earth

Do yourself a favour then... become transparent and earn your users' trust. Perhaps they may be more willing to donate to a tracker they know is 100% legit because they can trust the owner, but that sounds like a pretty dumb idea doesn't it?. Expense for you [and for any admin] to become transparent: $0. Trust, community, and guarantee [there abouts] of survival: priceless.

[Quarterquack]

Holy Crap. Do people not understand this yet? At the end of the day, you cannot be transparent. Besides being a security issue, maybe even though you're fine with it, other people you're dragging into legal affairs may not be (whether it be the host, a dc guy, a few admins on board that don't want anything leading back to them etc.).

I have respect for every. single. admin. that refuses to be transparent. Simply because of one reason: I know they're integrity oriented people. It's easy to fake a few numbers, and call it "transparency" - making people believe you're actually spending money when you're not. It's not hard to provide numbers just to satisfy people and keep them shut. It takes a real man to not take that approach, though, and instead adopt a headstrong stance of not caving in, or lying to your users.

If you actually think that "being transparent" can make you trust the admins more, then I say you're not as bright as you think you are. When a site (say SCC, BCG or otherwise) refuses to be transparent, I not only humbly respect the staffers for not treating the memberbase like children that need proof, but I also understand that I'm in good hands that don't make security-side errors.

EDIT: Maybe I have a different perspective on this because I actually ran a few sites that dabbled with legal/moral gray areas (not BT sites), but trust me, especially in illegalities, you don't want to publicize yourself or drag anymore attention to yourself than possible through google.

BT is a hobby, not a business. Shame many BT admins forget that. Shame many regular users forget that too.

Advocating altruism in a protocol that thrives on selfishness?

So you want admins to not make money, not be able to report their experience in the BT world as real world experience, and yet continue providing stellar service for their members? What could they possibly get out of it (besides the adrenaline rush of living on the edge)?
BT has made many a man a better person. From a coder getting a ton of experience, from a designer learning a few new tricks, from someone broadening their FTP/protocol/router/hacking savvy, and multiple other chances for self improvement. If you truly believe that Stoi should feel no remorse for investing so much time, learning a whole lot, and basically being successful in this melting pot of a competition, but getting nothing in return but empty gratitude in a truly thankless/recordless job then you need to reevaluate your positions on what constitutes a hobby, and what constitutes a skill.

[TONiC]

Holy Crap. Do people not understand this yet? At the end of the day, you cannot be transparent.

If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.

So you block out some words, some sentences, some codes. Sure, it does not guarantee 100% transparency between userbase and owner, but its a damn sight better than "We need $500 this month. Every month. Believe me, shit electricity just went out." Just putting in the effort to try to prove your transparancy is a sign of your honesty. If you justify your reasons for any censoring of proofs, then it's just as good as a non censored proof in terms of forming a relationship with the community. Hell this sort of thing is even going on in the UK govt: we gave the polticians the ability to spend money that's not theirs, they buy second homes. What if transparancy had been more involved here?

If tracker admins became transparent, or atleast, maintained ethical practises such as closing donations once it reaches 100%, then you [as a BT admin] can help diminish such problems as invite selling.

So you want admins to not make money, not be able to report their experience in the BT world as real world experience, and yet continue providing stellar service for their members?

Yes, simply because monetary value is not fundamental as to whether you can feel proud and boast about you achievements, be them physical or digital.

Advocating altruism in a protocol that thrives on selfishness?

BT has always been about sharing. Along the way it got corrupt by people identifying a way of creating money.

What could they possibly get out of it (besides the adrenaline rush of living on the edge)?

Joy and happiness. Read up on Mayo, Maslow and McGregor motivational theory. Look at the charities and social businesses in this world and you'll see money may not turn the world.

[Duckater]

Like stoi has said if you dont trust the admins dont use the site (what ever site)
But remember one thing nearly every site has to start some where and that is usually by people dipping into there own pockets to start it upand a lot of sites are still after yrs of being open not covering there costs and staff/owners are having to dip into their own pockets to keep them open.
Yes some of the larger sites could well be clearing their costs and more but this I have no real facts on.
Some smaller sites are lucky and have a few good users that donate on regular basis to support a site, but remember wether staff or a vip or just a generla regular user on a site a lot of people do this as a hobby so to some donating a small amount to their fav site see it as no differnet than paying golf subs etc.

Unfortunatly there are still a lot of people in the torrenting world that want every thing asap and do not realise this cannot be achieved for nothing for the sites.

[Quarterquack]

And then it becomes an issue of whether it is "true" transparency, or a fake one. And then that turns into an issue of "What happened before we became transparent and the changes came along?"

For skeptics there will always be a reason to doubt the integrity of those in charge. There's no foul or harm in that, considering what we all have our hands into. However, there's also a few solemn agreements between a site and its member-base, usually along the lines of "Staffers will take care of administrative responsibilities, members take care of everything else - each one sticks their own neck out for the other position in their own regard."

I don't understand how you could ask more of someone running a piracy site (semantics aside) when they ask you for no more than an IP entry in their database. Would it be okay for a site admin to ask for transparency from users, asking them where all they seed their torrents, how long they've had their seedbox, and a bunch of other irrelevant but revealing questions that affect no one directly? Are you sure you want it to be easier for the authorities to locate a server, or are you sure you want hundreds of people being worried every minute of their lives from a raid, just because a few people want to "trust" an arguably dishonest bunch of people? If your trust is easily placed in someone because they make an effort to seem sincere, then you should apply the same amount of trust towards them for the same effort put in towards being the same with their approach towards transparency debates.

I get how easy it is to say "Well, I don't know where my money is going, so why should I even donate?" The same argument applies to all fields of life, from taxes to possibly funding a friend's drug addiction. At the end of the day, there's the mutual agreement of getting what you want. If the site you're on is up and working, who cares about what happens behind the scenes if it doesn't affect you? Sometimes people in authority have to make decisions no one agrees with, simply because they see a bigger picture than others. Sometimes it's the wrong decision in 99.99% of peoples' eyes. But trust me, those 0.01% are right. You don't have to agree with authority to follow it. And you don't have to follow authority if you don't agree with it. Simple, me thinks.

If tracker admins became transparent, or atleast, maintained ethical practises such as closing donations once it reaches 100%, then you [as a BT admin] can help diminish such problems as invite selling.

Can you explain this further? I don't see the relation at all.

BT has always been about sharing. Along the way it got corrupt by people identifying a way of creating money.

BT has never been about sharing. It has always been about getting what you want. That new album, that new game, that new app, that new pack. If "sharing" were what draws people to BT, then we wouldn't have seedboxes, due to people understanding bandwidth is also a commodity, we wouldn't have separate private sites, considering everyone would just share all their material freely, and we wouldn't have staff, considering everyone should share a leadership responsibility. The very ethos that go against sharing are the things that have made BT as a protocol so successful, from staffers striving to make it to the top because of profits, from different trackers leading the competition in a healthy way (pretimes as a standard is a good example of this) etc. If "sharing" ruled the BT world, we'd all still be stuck on Demonoid (fantastic as it is, I don't think I even need to list the drawbacks).

Joy and happiness. Read up on Mayo, Maslow and McGregor motivational theory. Look at the charities and social businesses in this world and you'll see money may not turn the world.

Coming from a family of psychologists, I don't even need to read up on them to recall nearly their every prominent quote. And yet, you agree with me whether you believe it or not. You realize that altruism (idealistic sharing included) does not actually exist, and that even an admin who you require to be as selfless as possible needs to still get something out of the experience. As long as there's something more to be had, the person will strive to achieve it, considering they can always better their situation, once their joy and happiness have been sustained. Maybe you should read up on Maslow even more.

[stoi]

how can you stop invite selling by closing donations, unless you sell an invite with a donation and thats the only way to get one(and is that ethical in itself?).

I have said what servers we have on BCG somewhere before, its basically 2 servers in each 1U rack so 4 servers and 2 1U cases.