Why do popular sites prune inactive donators?

rtjackson4

New member
I was a member (among others) to Blackcats Games and PiSexy, both to which I've thrown well over $100 each in donations over the years, just to have my accounts pruned from their servers for inactivity while I was moving and didn't have internet. I also had positive rations at both with over 500GB uploaded.

Other sites, like Oink (when it was alive), Waffles, What, etc. that I have also donated plenty to, have kept my account.

Why are the people that support these sites and literally pay the bills getting this kind of treatment?

I frequent my torrent sites on a regular basis, but while I was moving, did not have internet, etc., I had no real choice, and I was not about to go to the local library to try to get through their firewalls to a bittorrent site to keep my account from being pruned.

I think all sites who accept donations should have more respect for those that donate...
 
Apart a few honourable exceptions, sites don't give a shit if you donated or not. They want your money and they want you to STFU about it. You get a few perks, but the most important one, the one that is about honour, they don't give you. and the pruning rule is one of the complains i could have.

because if you donated to help keep the site alive, the site should look back at you and help you keep your account alive. It's the least, the very least they should do.
Furthermore, they are not even being intelligent when disabling a donor. It's one less chance they have of seeing him donating again, after he already shown in the past he is willing to help the cause.

sites (most of them) have no loyalty to their users (some call them members, and those are where share and care walk side by side).
 
honourable ? There were some sites which let traders because they donated (against their own rules ), wasn't it? :whistling

Money can't (shouldn't) buy everything ...and for example, i don't think that pay to get some invites (or get some GB of UP) is good.

Inactive ?
As kukushka said :
account parking and warning staff before going offline also could helped...

My philosophy is, if I expect you to do it, then I should bloody do it as well.
Your philosophy is better than:
"Do what i say ...but don't do what i do "
 
I think giving donators immunity to pruning would be a step forward to sites, even if it's temporary for however long donator status lasts. It's not giving donators an edge ratio-wise but you guys do keep the site alive and having a sense of permanence to your account would seem completely fair.

The tracker I've donated the most to does this, but I visit it multiple times a day so it's not really something I need.
 
And thank you for presenting us with this opportunity .. bty i really cudnt tell if u were being sarcastic there .. But i guess thats inherent in your spastic nature isnt it ?

Well, I can see why somebody like Cirno dislikes this site so much. I haven't met many users on here, but if the majority is like you then I come to understand his reasons for it.
BTW did you see me twitching? Or how is that "spastic" explained?
 
Do not agree at all.

We prune everyone, but if they know they are going to be away for 2 months or more, we have a staff message box, IRC channel etc, where they can come in and tell us, we may just promote them to VIP to avoid the pruning of their account, but if they dont tell us, how the fuck are we supposed to know.

and sorry i dont see why we should code extra shit into a tracker to keep someone that donated 25p 3 years ago on the site.
 
One more point i wanna bring to your attention is that not everytime u can predict the duration that you are gonna be away for .. RAB if i am shifting into a new house do u think i would come to the IRC and explain the situation to you and then send you a message on the forum just so that i can keep my account .. All these community bullshit trackers are just for namesake or wat? If u trully have a mature community do u think that that they wont understand that you have a life outside internet too? Cmon man throw that high handedness away .. If i am not active then is 1KB taking too much space on your servers disk or wat?
 
If the donation doesn't seem sincere I wouldn't even give them donation status. 25p is pretty much a slap in your face. If someone is so tight on money they can't even donate $10, then they are in no position to be donating to a tracker in the first place.
 
The answer to the original question is rather simple: on most sites, pruning is done automatically by a script, without the intervention of staff. It's nothing personal, there is simply no code in place on most sites to distinguish between donors and other members when it comes to pruning inactive accounts.

There is, of course, the principal question of whether a donor should be getting a preferential treatment on a tracker or not, but that is a totally different question.
 
Do not agree at all.

We prune everyone, but if they know they are going to be away for 2 months or more, we have a staff message box, IRC channel etc, where they can come in and tell us, we may just promote them to VIP to avoid the pruning of their account, but if they dont tell us, how the fuck are we supposed to know.

and sorry i dont see why we should code extra shit into a tracker to keep someone that donated 25p 3 years ago on the site.
you're taking it to the 25p extreme. i'm talking about a "regular" donation, that the site asks for.
besides, usually when people lose internet access for some kind of reason, many times it's unexpected. so, going to a staff box and warning you is not the first thing they'll probably think of.
 
You were obviously not a donator when the system pruned your account.

Donations only last for a month, doesnt matter how much you donate, so if you donated 3 months previously, then your not a donator anymore, so if you didnt sign in for 2 months (which you must not have done) then the system will prune you auto.
 
but if they are regular donators, surely they would login if they donated.

btw i have just put the pruning up on BCG to 4 months unparked and 6 months parked.

wont help the op much, but then we do have 122,000 referrals in the system atm, so he has every chance of getting back in.
 
Have to say i sympathis with ur case, i dont think donars should ever have their accounts pruned for inactivity unless they have been away for a crzy amount of time like a year or so. Without donare these sites would not be about at all.
 
you see, deep down. you're one of the good guys. ;)
all this donation talk has gotten me irritated, because once i was disabled from a tracker that i donated to, and was an excellent standing member during over 2 years, just because the owner saw i'm a member here. go figure.
so, it's a lack of respect for the members and in my opinion what most trackers really care is to elevate their donors %. sad, but true.
not saying that it's what happens to your tracker, as you've said before you paid for it for years over years.

what i'm saying is that no matter how good of a member you are, and do everything by the book, if one day one staffer wakes up in a wrong mood, and goes disabling you for shit's sake, you go and think that it was a waste of time invest money and time in a tracker, as nothing of that will be taken into accounting.

but once again, you're still one of those old school guys, with a positive philosophy toward membership. you have all my respect for that.
 
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