Just an unnerving thought

I don't see traders as being inherently morally deficient (although most of them are), my main reason for disliking it is because it's selfish. When a tracker gives you invites it's with the intention that you're going to invite someone that will be a good addition. Traders try to maximize the "value" of their invites by trading them with whoever will offer them the most in return with no regard for whether that person will be an asset or a liability to the tracker.

IMO, BT is supposed to be about sharing. Trying to maximize the value of something that was given to you for free with no regard for the effect is has on the tracker is just plain selfish. Since trading does attract those who are selfish, who have no regard for others, I do find them morally repugnant, and since it's the vast majority who are like that I do tend to stereotype them.
 
I just noticed staff members (well tracker representatives, which in my eyes are all on one panel) saying it was unethical to get someone to buffer one's account. I don't understand that mentality.

This all reminds me of when people were railing on UBiTSA for making the SCC-ScT theme, and he said something along the lines of "We're a bunch of pirates downloading shit on a torrent tracker, stop trying to assume the moral high ground".
 
I absolutely understand your point of view puckface, and personally know other ex-traders like you that are similarly great members of the trackers they belong to. But 4pirates & shalafi are also traders, as was tudor/basilheydens/trollin thunder and what exactly have these individuals done for the torrenting community ?
These are only a few examples, and I agree extreme ones, but there are two types of traders, there are those like you that trade for personal use, and then there are the collectors.
Trading simply to have 'it' but then becoming bored and discarding the membership is a security risk for the tracker, the account is no longer that of the person and quite often these accounts end up in the hands of previously banned users, who were banned for legitimate reasons.
Active traders usually aren't desirable as members because they are too busy covering their tracks to participate in the tracker much, the a/c is just kept ticking over because it is a trophy a/c. Often with this type of trader the a/c was created with the intention of passing it on, an anonymous throwaway email and the minimum needed to keep the a/c active. These a/c's can be passed on several times, and then of course there are the buffered a/c's created simply so that someone can hit'n'run the a/c to death then go on to the next buffered a/c.
All of this is a direct consequence of trading, or rather the second type of trading, where a/c's are treated as baseball cards. There are forums out there where users brag how many times they are a member at trackers, and show off how many times they have been banned like noddy badges.
Bizarrely enough the less the 'level' of the tracker the worse this problem is because of how disposable the a/c is in the eyes of the collector/trader.
It is this kind of moronic collecting which is the true problem and causes tracker staff so much grief.
The problem really is how do you define 'good trading' as opposed to 'bad trading' ? A line has to be drawn somewhere, these websites set themselves up as private trackers not public ones. They did this to offer a certain security to their members and also give better speeds than hit n run land does.
So although there are examples of great users who were traders like you puckface, from my own experience they tend to be the minority and anyone who deals with the other side, with users lying all the time and the bullshit stories you have to listen to sometimes, it tends to harden you to a certain extent, luckily however a certain percentage simply aren't that bright.
The point I am trying to make is that trading has the capacity to do great damage to a tracker website from leeching & banned members through to trophy a/c's nursed along to show someone's e-peen, not all traders or trades do this I agree, but the collector attitude and the marketplace of values based on tracker levels doesn't ultimately do the trackers themselves alot of good, how can it?
I understand you as an individual and your motives I do not understand the whole marketplace mentality of the collectors passing memberships around like baseball cards.

Yup, there are always assholes. Traders and non-traders the same. Agreed.

I just feel that generalization of anyone (traders here) is bullshit.
 
Spend some time in a help channel. I guarantee your opinion of traders will change considerably. Sure, there are always exceptions, but the vast majority are lying, cheating, selfish douchebags.

Im sure the ones that use the help channel are.

But I can see my efforts are fruitless

Let me drone on like a good little FST member: traders are scum, traders are scum. Now were all happy eh?
 
THis is BT not anarchy

There are rules, and I feel that it is morally wrong to break them.
We are a community of ppl "BT" and we ahve rules to abide by

Anywhere you go are rules, You say "We are a bunch of ppl breaking rules, why follow tracker rules"

Well go to prison, its filled with ppl that break rules for a living, and they have rules/morals then ever.

Oh yeah

Traders are scum

Have you read the darn thread or did you just read one sentence and assumed you knew what I was talking about? Keep your uninformed, irrelevant, idiotic remarks to yourself next time.
 
This is not an indictment of trading or anyone in particular but you lost me with that comment.
First you said he "needed" it .Clearly no one no matter who they are ,where they live or what they want out of life "needs" any bittorrent tracker ,it simply comes down to (selfish)desire .
If that person felt that whatever personal morals he had were worth tossing away for that particular tracker rather than being laudable it is both hypocritical and ( again) self-serving (selfish).
Then you go on to say he did it because he "knew" he would would enjoy it.
The only thing I have to say to that is it must be nice to be prescient .

and this is why context should always precede the language morphology.So contextually speaking,when I said 'he "knew" he would enjoy it' ,I clearly didn't mean that as the prophetic knew,I meant it to be understood as a metaphor for a wall of text describing what he did or how resourceful he proved to be to eventually make it to staff.
Same for the need bit.I clearly didn't mean it like "haiti needs us".

If that person felt that whatever personal morals he had were worth tossing away for that particular tracker rather than being laudable it is both hypocritical and ( again) self-serving (selfish).
the principles of right and wrong don't mean the same thing to everyone.While you and I might agree that trading does more harm than good to a tracker,I don't think its accurate to take our disagreement with the act to ethical levels.Its wrong and if anything,its a rather empty understanding of the wider debate on morality.

See what I just did there?you wouldn't allow me to use the word "need" so am equally not allowing you to use "morality" as you please :P
 
I don't really think they're scum, however I do find most of the ones here particularly idiotic.

I also think they deserve what they get if they get caught. If you're going to trade, don't come here and whine when you get caught by staff. Also, don't beg for invites in the invite request system so that you can then use those accounts as trading fodder (see: some recent FTN requests for example). Who the hell would waste an invite on someone who's then going to profit off it? You're better off sticking to your trading forum rather than lying through your teeth about how you don't trade.

There's also a huge difference between someone who makes a one time trade for a site they really want, and then become a decent user, rather than the idiots here with hundreds of accounts that do it out of spite for tracker rules, or as a hobby.
 
It kind of reminds me of the concept behind "stealing" other sites uploads. Oh, it's "morally wrong" and unacceptable to "steal" a bland old scene release from SCC to upload to your tracker, yet it's used in the same context where everyone is already "stealing" files? Really? Do they have any idea how hypocritical that sounds?
Offtopic: Well, this isn't official but AFAIK SCC admins won't ban you for just reuploading regular Scene stuff unless you're doing it with autobot.
 
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