Thread: Couple of suggestions for Introduction Section

I have a couple of Suggestions for the intro section. So here goes:

1)A lot of people come along that have no tracker(or only demonoid) and are unable to post ratio proofs. So it would be nice if it was properly mentioned that if you have no ratio proofs, you have to post a screenshot of you torrent client statistics.



2)I had created a thread for changing the examples in the User Account Safety thread because the unit of data was not visible in the demonoid fake ratio. Ive seen a lot of people following this and hiding the data, so could the examples be changed? Vegas agreed to this in that thread, but i think he forgot. I watermarked the image posted by dan in that thread. The ipt proof looks good.How is this for a replacement:




3) Ive put this suggestion in someones thread before, but figured if as im opening a suggestions thread, ill put it here as well. The trading question asks:

What are your views on trading invites?

Which a lot of people answer as if they would trade. For example, i once picked this up in the intro section:

What are your views on trading invites?
as long as invitee is a good sharer, it's fine. How else do we grow the community

After being told that trading is not allowed:

What are your views on trading invites?
It always kind of irked me. You know, how else can you get started unless someone is just nice and gives and invite. Demonoid was my first private tracker, and I got it from a friend. I'm for giving freely to trusted users - people with good ratios. HIT & RUN is bad for the community.

Usually, the introer just tells them trading is bad and asks the person to change their answer if they want to get in. I dont think this is the best option, but we cannot reject everyone that answers in this question that way, because a lot of them are newbies. I think that changing the question to something like :

What are your views on Exchanging invites, as opposed to giving them away for free?

and taking a tougher stance to anyone who answers this question in the affirmative would be better.

4)Also, flutrose suggested to ask for full screen proofs rather than cropped ones, which i think is a great idea. To quote her:

I would LOVE to see the ratio proofs changed to require a full window screenshot rather than just the little snippets that so many people post. We might not catch the smart cheaters by requiring this but I guarantee we'd catch a bunch of dumb ones!

5) A line about not posting one word answers, or they wont be repped in, would be nice too.

EDIT(Suggestion by Flutrose) 6) Also, While repping in new people, could it be possible to not take into account the rep power of people. To take an example, i was repped in by flutrose, and got 20 odd rep points. So all i had to do to see the trusted section was wait a month and spam 100 or so posts.

EDIT 2(Suggestion by TankGirl) 7) See this thread : The Help Section

To quote a bit :

So I was flicking about the forum and I noticed that some of the information in several of the stickys is duplicated in various sections but they are different points of editing, what I mean is one sticky says one thing and another says something else.

I quite like this suggestion too.

EDIT 3 8) There also seems to be support for interviews through irc. I think this might be an excellent idea, but im just putting it out there because people seemed to agree with it. It would certainly help reduce the number of cheaters entering. Any feedback on this would be appreciated.

Thanks for reading through this, and please post your suggestions, if any..:001_smile:

All agreed upon , what i would like to suggest is the trading question , i think it should be : Have you traded before ? why ?

This way it will be obvious if the applicant had former trading experience .

Adding a note :" Be honest , this is not a trick question" is also a good idea , i can't remember it well , but it was in ptn 's external application .

Originally Posted by medschool

All agreed upon , what i would like to suggest is the trading question , i think it should be : Have you traded before ? why ?

This way it will be obvious if the applicant had former trading experience .

But i think that if a person has not traded before, dosent mean he will not do it in the future...Maybe we can have two questions then....and thanks for the reply!

Originally Posted by scoobydoo

But i think that if a person has not traded before, dosent mean he will not do it in the future...Maybe we can have two questions then....and thanks for the reply!

If the applicant had a past of trading , he/she is not going to be repped in , if he/she hadn't then they are going to follow the No-Trading rule , it's sorta trap question if u know wht i mean

no , thank you for doing a great job in the intro section thee exalted one :laugh: , i mean ofcourse with flutrose and jekata an all the gatekeepers , personally i used to lurk there stopped after the 99th attempt of revolver :laugh:.

Originally Posted by medschool

If the applicant had a past of trading , he/she is not going to be repped in , if he/she hadn't then they are going to follow the No-Trading rule , it's sorta trap question if u know wht i mean

no , thank you for doing a great job in the intro section thee exalted one :laugh: , i mean ofcourse with flutrose and jekata an all the gatekeepers , personally i used to lurk there stopped after the 99th attempt of revolver :laugh:.

Hey yeah, that might work....Maybe something like "Have you ever traded before? And would you be willing to do it the future? Why?" or something better phrased than that. I actually wanted to include "exchange an invite for another" in the question, as it would be more clearer to the midgets. Well see what other people think. And thanks bro.

People who have traded in the past have been repped in. I can respect someone who says they traded in the past and it was a bad experience and they've since decided that trading sucks and they don't want any part of it. We all learn and grow from our experiences. I'm less concerned about someone's past than I am about what they think about trading now or if they'll consider doing it in the future.

Frankly, I'm tired of arguing with midgets over the trading question and tired of explaining what trading is to new folks or people who struggle with english. That should have been done before they got to the point of having to answer the question. All that's required is a brief explanation of what trading is, that T-I is against it, and that all members are forbidden to trade here or anywhere else. It could be added as a blurb to the top of the Introduction Template.

Perhaps something like this:

"Trading is the act of exchanging one invite/account for another invite/account or selling an invite/account for money. T-I is a strict anti-trading community, we do not allow our members to trade here or anywhere else. We do not engage in the exchange of accounts under any circumstances. Any member caught trading or selling invites/accounts will be immediately banned."

Then change the trading question to read something like this: "What does trading mean to you?"

I firmly support the rest of the changes proposed by scoobydoo.

One other change I would suggest is a complete re-do of the intro section. Right now we have 6 stickies and the information is scattered around. I think it's intimidating and confusing. That info should be condensed into two stickies: the rules and a sticky named "Must read before making your application" (which would include needed info that isn't a rule).

P.S. Please do something about the rep points we give when repping in. I'm giving people 25 rep points if I rep them in and it really isn't fair to have our midgets starting out on such an uneven playing field.

Well, what with holidays and all, i had completely forgotten about these. So im just putting it back up there for consideration.

The invite trading question is a little bit of a trap as-is. The "Have you traded before?" version is better perhaps, but really the problem is that what does it mean if the person gives a trading = good paragraph, and upon being told that there is a right answer and that isn't it, goes back and completely reverses their position?

It seems like there are a couple cases here.
1. They're genuinely and strongly in favor of trading, and upon reading the rules or being admonished for their opinion flip their stated stance in order to get in. They continue trading as before.
2. Same as 1, but they actually change their position and stop trading
3. They're genuinely and strongly against trading, but because of the wording of the question believe that they should write a pro-trading statement. Once someone yells at them for it, they switch to their actual stance and continue on

Changing the question will prevent case #3, which is certainly good but not actually the problem.
The real problem seems that there is no actual way to screen someone in case #1, but has enough intelligence to know that the community frowns upon trading and acts accordingly. These are the actual people that you want to prevent from entering, and a short questionnaire is going to be insufficient to identify them.


On a different note, a short test of English proficiency might be nice. Those that couldn't pass it really wouldn't be able to get much out of this site anyway

Yeah i know Morganti, weeding out the intelligent traders is almost impossible, but i guess we try to do what we can. In any case, this is just a suggestion, and open to debate. I kinda like what flutrose suggested above as well.

Updated it with TankGirl's suggestion, and a suggestion about irc interviews.