This is it folks, our beloved T-I community just turned 3 years this week,
Let's start with a little story about T-I's evolution in time.
It's all been started as an ideal, to create a tracker invite forum, where people could swap, send and receive invites. Later to be known as the best and the most trustworthy (no trading) bittorrent related community, which respects the rules of each tracker, and also it's own rules.
This sparkle, this ideal, came up from 
Dave, our beloved T-I founder, who always worked hard to improve the community. He dedicated a lot of time and work for this forum.
Once the forum was created, and being one of the few from it's category that existed at that time (December 2007), people started to find it easily and join it immediately after.
In the beginning, Dave set some simple rules (like no spamming, no cheating), and started to give free invites to certain trackers, like hdbits, what.cd, bitme, bitmetv, in competitions or giveaways, with a single requirement: being active in forums. He risked his accounts by giving invites to completely strangers, for the love of an ideal, just to encourage them to be active.
For several weeks, Dave worked by itself, to grow the activity and community. After that, he started to search for good persons, for staff crew but he didn't find those deserving members so fast as he wished to.
That was only the beginning. Good and active members got Dave's eye, and he appointed the first batch of promotions: Elonoir, tehllamaking, Cheen, Asherpotter, Sic, LingLing, and they have been great as staff members. The community really started to grow up. The members have started to know each other and got more active in each section. While that, Dave has done some site updates, changed to vBulletin, added some new rules to improve the community, some new features like VIP rank and section, IRC channel , iTrader system (later to be known as iGiver), and new subforums to divide some sections, like giveaway forums. Constant work has been made, to improve the security measures.
Users registered continuously, T-I was getting more and more popular.
For various reasons, the some staff started to retire, and Dave had to look for other deserving assets. He promoted ethicks whom started in force throwing banhammer against the bad users, followed quickly by nailbomb and schuwe... and a little bit later by Sraosha (formerly known as reggie). This was the second batch of promotions.
From this batch, only ethicks remained active from the beginning of his promotion, and he's still working hard for this community, he imposed authority and respect over the community. Dave and ethicks are the oldest active staff members, and without their dedication, shown authority, hard work, and their tough personality on the important decisions, this forum couldn't have been the same.
The forum grew up alot in no time. Rules were implemented, to increase the users security... Trading has been forbidden, as the community decided that within a poll created by Dave. The Give away has been divided in subforums, where you had to meet some requirements to access them. Great users already registered to the site, and they were still registering, and, as they started to feel more comfortable giving away hard to join trackers at that time, like bitmetv, bitmetv, ScT, SCC, waffles and so on, a new point has been reached.
A unique competition has been started, MOTM where members are elected by nominations to get a permanent V.I.P.
While that, Balauru had been promoted by Dave to a Super Mod, after some weeks of VIP (won in MOTM) as he deserved it, being a great asset to this site, willing to help every time. Later was promoted as an administrator
The giveaways went beyond limit and a unique type of giveaway has been initiated: Seedboxes Ga's. As far as I remember, this was initiated by Vegas, and also he has been a high quality member since he joined.
Again, some members... dedicated members arose. That's right, we're talking about JustJenna, Signus, Vegas and Synthesis.... the third batch of promotions.
After some days of work, T-I reached a higher point.
- TI Radio idea came up, and it has been implemented right away and for it were needed several 
Radio DJ's, whom were doing great job... we had a quality radio but, unfortunately, that didn't last for very long time. Josh, is the one who kept this status. ([joke] I bet he loves to be unique[/joke])
- There was implemented a new class "News writer" and those who had this class, had to do a daily writing of bittorrent news. Later, this class has been revised as "News Editor" and gained some modding options, to accept/edit or decline/move news written by other members.
- New user class has been added, 
The Exalted class. This one was conceived for those members which are the most great ones, the exalted ones, and they needed to earn a special title. This title can't be bought, or asked for, you have work for it and deserve it. At the beginning, you could earn it by solving some riddles but now, you can earn it at staff decision and MOTM competition.
- The forum gained more trust. Various staff from different trackers came here to do recruitment threads, great members doing high giveaways, doing quality post, helping each other, dedicating their time for this community. High end invites started to be given away in public, or in a request, high end trackers like FTN, TT, Pedro's, etc. and also many, many seedboxes.
Also we have to mention members like reksat, and Ixius as staffers who deserved this position, as they were really good on what there were done and that why they earn the red title. Unfortunately, they had to retire because of personal matters, like the other former staffers. They all have done a great work at TI.
After some hard works with the intro section, it has been decided another staff class 
Intro Moderators, where some heavily dedicated members on intro section can apply for, and gain some modding powers and also advantages. We have now, some very good intro moderators and lead intro moderator TankGirl (such a nice person, she puts a lot of effort on what she's doing). Also there were some great members who had retired from the post, because of personal matters like 
usedblender, LAZ, or even Freedom (who had been an lead intro moderator) (and recently Choppers), and others, promoted to a higher staff class, like 
bridskid, and hummingbird. Talking about HB I'll always have many praise words for her. She worked hard, she had been in the most of the user/staff classes... vip, radio dj, exalted, lead intro mod, and now supermod, this is one of her best characteristics, she loves to put effort on what she's doing. Also there, a member got administrator's eyes and have been promoted: Synth
Later, new promotions and staff class, were been initiated: 
Help Desk Mods, with Morph and Subkar as first ones, and they are doing such a great work... and Moderators with Eschaton, MikeD, el2em and TheLetterZ as initiators. Later, el2em an TheLetterZ got promoted, because of their actions, and they also reached those red crowned titles, step by step, normal user>vip>exalted>mod>supermod. They were, and they still are insane with their giveaways. Also, Rellik have been promoted to a staff position for his actions, in no time, but unfortunately, he had to retire.
The T-I forum that you are seeing right now, is the result of a tough work and dedication from staff and former staff members, along with the users who firstly started to believe in this ideal, to create a perfect and trustworthy community, and risked their accounts to start the trust between members.
Like that, more and more people started to feel comfortable with the other members, and more high invites were handed out more often.
Many members worked hard, in many different ways, to improve this community. The rules were and still are constantly updating and changing, just for improvements.
At the moment, T-I is the most respectable and popular bittorrent community. You'll not see such a activity on any other forum. In the past, invites where heavily received, and nowadays, invites like bitme, bitmetv, waffles, etc. are heavily asked.
This is the forum that is not about invites, but about community/family, where peoples helps each other. invites being just a secondary part.
This forum is now, what other forums craves to be like. We got some great site themes, but at one time, Dave implemented, to our surprise, T-I v2 with many great features, which got very much appreciation and very welcomed. And now, once again a new version (v3) is about to arrive, with other new great forum perks.
In time, as getting more popular and respected, some jealous people got pissed of and started to attack us. We had downtimes (because of attacks or system), whether 1 hour or 1 week, from time to time, like all other sites do. Several servers were changed, but thanks to Dave and those who supported the site, all things went smoothly and no one ever succeed to bring us to silence... this family had always had the last word spoken. And guess what, we never responded to attacks so this was another reason for attackers to get more jealous.
Shall we talk about users, now?
What to talk about the users? Firstly, let's say that, in time many great users came here, and they still come. Each great member is an asset to this family by their own way.
First pages of top repped members speak for itself. Do you believe that, a year back, the top repped member had "Has much to be proud of" as rep title? And now almost 3 pages are with members that have "Reputation beyond repute"... that really says a lot.
Let's not forget about the old members, those who couldn't get more, because they were active when the rep power was more smaller than it is right now, and there were like ten times fewer members. But in time, they got bigger and bigger.
It's true that, many members went inactive, because of this or because of that. We can take it like a "generation" term... members being extraordinary while they were active, deserve to be respected, like Elvis Presley at his time. Some members are still active, somehow, and some others are not, and not as much as they used to be in the past, members like mecht, botykorea, mt3ch, pike, pjkp20, Jekata, Mortivore, Kirby, Beepin, flutrose, Sraosha (yes, here is a mix of users classes, because not being a VIP, Exalted or Staff, doesn't mean they haven't been considered assets) and many more others, from the beginning, until today. I wrote down the firsts members that came to my mind, and as they are countless, i cant list them all. In a way or another, whether tiny or extraordinary, whether they made their name known to the whole forum or not, every member have to be respected with the minimum required thing, like the following motto: "Respect, to be respected!"
New "generations" came and others are about to come, bringing this forum higher and higher, in all its meanings.
Let's finish the "user talk", speaking a little about of some banned users that were good users.
- Once upon a time, there were some users who dedicated lot of work, and like others, they were been considered high members. They started to be rude or they have been caught with bad habits, that were against the rules. And as the rules had to be enforced and respected, they couldn't have not received the mighty banhammer. If that wouldn't happen they could have been taken as "idols" by the new comers, and the family could have taken a bad turn but that didn't happen thanks to those who respect the rules.
Past T-I vs Present T-I! Let's have some comparisons between then and now. Let's have a look over the past.
This is botykorea's idea, to make this section of the post, so i'll start with his example
- First request thread ever made which was for F*N. As being a starter forum and with only few members and few rules, we can say that they were braking the actual rules
, but in a funny way, just read it
- In the beginning, the registered members were shy, and they didn't start to post once they landed here. But with some encouragements, especially from Dave, they started to talk with others, and now, once the people visit us, they are convinced about this helpful community, and also they get introduced and familiarized with us, by our intro section.
- In December 2007, Google spider just found T-I, and next it came up as a result among others by googling "torrent invites". Nowadays, if you google those words, guess what is the first result.... that's correct Torrent-Invites.com
These we are just examples, if you want you can add more in this thread. And also the old (former) staff members, and everybody are more than welcome to share some words. Let it be like a meeting between the old aged and new aged :D.
Thank you all because from a simple forum, you are constituting such a big and great community.
Happy Birthay and Long Live T-I!
Side Notes:
- I haven't had time to include all the great names in this post, and i don't want forget someone. You know who you are and I respect you.
- I may not written some words each member I mentioned, but you know you know you are great, and other ones who deserve a mention aswell.
- Some words might get repetitive.
- There might exist some grammar errors, and i'm sorry for that.
Special thanks to:
Vegas, because he brought up this story to the staff;
Staff, because they reviewed and accepted this
botykorea, because third part is his idea.
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I would like to thank everyone from the bottom of my heart. Thanks to T-I i am now part of so many awesome trackers which 3 years ago i couldnt even dream of. The site has so many generous members who selflessly help others. And what a wonderful giveaways we have here. I mean where have you seen so many F*N giveaways in a two week period. 
