Thread: A simple suggestion regarding tracker reviews

This is following Lucky21's post which was made 2 months ago in the tracker review suggestion thread. I figure it will receive more attention here so I've decided to place it in the general suggestion section. Anyways, I have to agree with him about our reviews mainly consisting of images and a few lines of text. No offense to any of the reviewers (since some of my own reviews are lacking in essential information as well), but I find this quite useless. You will see the layout design of the tracker, see the rules and basic requirements of the site, but nothing really essential to a member hoping to join aside from adding it to their collection.

I know Vegas have been going around and asking for reviewers to put in their own notes and descriptions if they're missing but most of them are passed off with simple sentences.

Seems right now we're only trying to expand the numbers of reviews, but really aren't placing much effort into the quality of them. Now that the majority of our reviews are from either 2009 or 2010, I think it's about time we set some guidelines for the reviewer's notes.

The format is fine as it is, but I would like to see more information in the notes part. I don't mean the written description of the tracker but the reviewers opinions of the tracker. To answer this properly with well-descriptive information, you'll need to be a part of the community for longer than a few days to create the review.

We could add simple questions for the reviewer to answer in their notes.

Yes, I know this is a forum and those who are interested could go ahead and post their questions in each subsection, but it's nice to see the info in the original post rather than reading through all the posts following it. Don't get me wrong though. There will be questions unanswered and members will still ask them, but the purpose of a review is to cover most information so members don't have to ask too many following questions.

I'm going to take morpheuss666's review on Bit-UNiT3D (I'm only picking on you here because I'm planning on joining this tracker soon :001_smile:). His review is fine. I was able to see the general rules, see the layout of the tracker, and some various stats. Although, after asking him a few questions, that got me very curious and after reading Eschaton's mini review in the VIP section (here), I was set on getting an invite when I'm back at home from my vacation.

Basically, the notes section should consist of any information that will help torrenters and give them a heads up on what to expect. It should also provide some basic tips and tricks that will improve their ratios.

There should be information on freeleeches and bonuses if there are any. I don't know about other members, but the first thing I do once I join a tracker is find all the healthy freeleeches and download as many as I can to build a decent buffer before I start downloading non-freeleech materials.

Reviewers should make note of how easy or difficult it is to seed at the tracker. Will one survive if they don't have a seedbox? How long before a new torrent dies out? Will I be okay if I download older torrents? Is there a request section? How often are requests filled?

What's the speed like? Are most seeders/uploaders seedboxers? Are the pretimes decent? How much of a difference is there to similar tracker releases?



The content. Yes, there's the categories section, but what is your opinion of its content? Are there internal encoders? Are members able to upload their own materials?

The community. You'll definitely need to be apart of the tracker for awhile to answer this properly. How active are the IRC channels and the forum? What can we expect there? Are there benefits and unlocked sections if you're a PU+ or VIP? If there's an invite section, what invites are they offering? Are there unlimited invites to certain trackers?

I know some of you will probably disagree about adding some of these info as you may believe it's knowledge to be earned after committing your time and effort to a tracker, but it may also peak a member's interest to join the tracker. Some people may only join the tracker, become PU+, request for the invite they long for, and may or may not stop using the tracker, but that's something they should decide on their own. Although, after working hard to obtain PU+, I doubt many members will simply stop using the tracker.

Anyways, that's my 2 cents. Hopefully some reviewers agree with me and start adding more information to their reviews rather than creating a review simply for Vegas' bonuses. The incentive is there, but remember the incentive increases with the quality of your review.

I agree with you and even more i know that even some of my reviews lack some information/ description... But i will tell you this, from the trackers i reviewed so far less than 30% ( in my opinion ) deserve any attention... i mean the majority are new trackers or trackers that never made it higher than low-level and have open sign ups for undetermined periods of time... just to gain/ recruit some new members... those are the trackers with shitty content, speeds and pre-times and the forum activity is little or none... probably you wonder why i chose these trackers : well, i thought every tracker deserve its chance to manifest/ to be highlighted at one point... for many trackers out there, i gave my honest opinion about those categories mentioned above... few of those trackers managed to sustain themselves and become better in time...

-- i understand that a person upon searching/ reading a review they don't guide just from those pictures / design and they need the info and user opinions ( honest and objective if possible ) about that tracker and i totally agree with it...

-- i am for the idea of introducing some questions and even a poll, like i suggested before... for people that are members there should vote about content/ speeds/ pretimes/ community thus giving an overall rating about that tracker from its members.

I strongly agree with your sentiments here. I've always found that most of the reviews here are lacking in detail. They have screenshots, yes, but that's not what I look for in a review. A review should give information about features, points of interest, parts that make the site stand out and such things to educate people about the site. Of course, that means trying to avoid biased comments.

I've tried my best to include this kind of information (and appropriate screenshots) in my review for BakaBT. I guess it is slightly biased in that I'm a high-ranking member on BBT, so I like it a lot, but that doesn't stop my review from being informative.

--- in addition to el2em's above suggestion, i would like to make one of my own, regarding a general review form/ template, that would have both the review pictures and the info el2em said a review should have, and people/ review-ers may use it to review trackers. It will be somehow like the intro form...more or less...

My current review template looks like this :

:: Tracker's Name ::


URL :


SIGN UP URL :


Description :


Logo/ Header

[img][/img]

Home Page

[img][/img]

Stats

[img][/img]

Categories

[img][/img]

Browse Page

[img][/img]

[img][/img]

[img][/img]

Forums

[img][/img]

[img][/img]

Rules

[img][/img]

[img][/img]

User Classes and Promotion

[img][/img]

IRC

[img][/img]

Bonus/ Karma Points System

[img][/img]

Donation System

[img][/img]

--- adding more info/ description to each and every category there in part, than a general description at the begining, would help the reader to have a better look on that tracker.
--- so if possible, i would like to suggest mixing this template with el2em's questions regarding content, pre-times, speeds, forum and IRC community, bonus system rules...etc
--- so, the template could look like this

:: Tracker's Name ::


URL :


SIGN UP URL :


General Overview/ Description : Tracker's time in BT world, Tracker's Genre, Design, Gazelle/ TBDEV based graphics... general stuff


Logo/ Header

[img][/img]

Home Page

[img][/img]

Stats

Stats : X number of registered users out of Y number of maximum users, X number of active torrents out of Y total number of torrents...Seeders/ Leechers/ Ratio

[img][/img]

Categories

Categories : Besides those stated, does the tracker have a filter for freeleech/ Golden torrents ? Advanced search filters/ Bugs upon searching torrents ( if any )

[img][/img]

Browse Page

Content :

Yes, there's the categories section, but what is your opinion of its content? Are there internal encoders? Are members able to upload their own materials?

Are there any freeleech torrents ?

How easy or difficult it is to seed at the tracker. Will one survive if they don't have a seedbox? How long before a new torrent dies out? Will I be okay if I download older torrents? Is there a request section? How often are requests filled?

[img][/img]

[img][/img]

[img][/img]

Forums

Community ( Both IRC and Forums ) :

How active are the IRC channels and the forum? What can we expect there? Are there benefits and unlocked sections if you're a PU+ or VIP? If there's an invite section, what invites are they offering? Are there unlimited invites to certain trackers?

[img][/img]

[img][/img]

Rules

[img][/img]

[img][/img]

User Classes and Promotion

[img][/img]

IRC

[img][/img]

Bonus/ Karma Points System

Bonus System : If not caught in the picture, stated how does it work.

[img][/img]

Donation System

[img][/img]


Personal overview on the tracker. Does it worth joing in or searching for an invite in reviewer's opinion?

--- maybe this is too much, or other things need to be added, but i think it would look good to have all the reviews made by a template, and people would know what to find out upon reading one of our reviews. I mean if we do reviews, we might actually do them right.

I still think that there is way too much images/it is not a true review. Currently, all "reviews" of tracker sites are just pictures, and a few sentences. How about we start making it a real review? Show the header, show the browse, but that shouldn't be the core of the tracker review. We have to talk about it, what's so good about, what does it offer-- torrent and community wise. When I look at some reviews, and this is not to attack anyone who does a review, they just look a bit half-arsed/ just made to get Rep points. It just takes a few minutes to throw together a few pictures, and make or copy a general statement about the tracker. Shouldn't reviews look more like this and this combined?

However that is just my personal opinion.

Originally Posted by Lucky21

I still think that there is way too much images/it is not a true review. Currently, all "reviews" of tracker sites are just pictures, and a few sentences. How about we start making it a real review? Show the header, show the browse, but that shouldn't be the core of the tracker review. We have to talk about it, what's so good about, what does it offer-- torrent and community wise. When I look at some reviews, and this is not to attack anyone who does a review, they just look a bit half-arsed/ just made to get Rep points. It just takes a few minutes to throw together a few pictures, and make or copy a general statement about the tracker. Shouldn't reviews look more like this and this combined?

However that is just my personal opinion.

+1

when you review a game or a movie you dont just show a bunch of screenshots of said game or movie. you actually talk about the plot, the dialogue the characters and all the rest of it. The main part of the review needs to contain a few well thought paragraphs about every aspect of the tracker. Some information about getting in, about the community, even how nice the mods are. When you post a review for a tracker you should have used it for at least a week. In order to properly review a tracker you need to really get the feel of what its like, not just sign up take a bunch of screenshots and call that a review. Latley people seem to be just posting tons of reviews that are just cookie cutter template reviews with no thought put into them, nothing to individualize them according to the tracker being reviewed.

An option would be to make a special team of Reviews in TI who would actually make quality reviews about all aspects of the tracker. which in my opinon should include:

• First impressions of the tracker, how the community welcomed you, how long it took to really get settled in, how long it took to learn the ropes of using it to the max.
• Design, is it attractive? is it clean, or is it over complicated? does it function well? are there lots of bugs in it?
• What features does the tracker have? what unique ones? how do they function? do they work most of the time? do they contain bugs?
• what content does the tracker offer? what is most downloaded? what does the community tend to go for? (this could help seeding) Is there lots of FL, if at all? are there any good packs? what kind of unique content does the tracker have? is a lot of content uploaded each day? does the tracker have an auto upload system? list the category's the trackers have? how many peers do they have? are the torrents well seeded? how good are the pretimes? how easy is it to seed? whats the best way to seed?
• Community, how active are there forums? what forums are there? are people friendly? are there any particular worth mentioning forum? like a great tutorials section, or a design one? How are the forum mods? are they assholes on a power trip or are they nice people? how is the irc? is there just 100's of people idling for an irc bonus or is there actually interesting conversations going on there?
• Rules, are there any particular rules that stand out? like maximum ratio in SeX, or the rules in bcg. is the tracker ratio free? what are the user classes? what are the pros of higher user classes? whats the best way to advance user classes? are mods strict about these rules? things that people often get banned for, what to look out for.
• Donations, do a lot of people donate? what do you get for donating? what are the donation amounts?
• Site statistics, show all the statistics the tracker offers.
• Signups, when was last open signup? are any open signups planned in the near future? how do you get invites? whats the best way to enter the tracker?
• Summary of the tracker and/or a score out of 10 for each aspect of the tracker, explain what are the trackers strong and weak points, maybe write that's its not even worth trying to get into, and suggest better alternatives, not all the reviews have to be good reviews.

Therese probably more things but that's all I can think off right now.
The idea isn't to answer these questions in a Q&A template format, but to keep them in mind while writing a detailed review containing a few paragraphs at least. every other forum has 1,000's of cookie cutter reviews containing just pictures and one line max, TI will really stand out if we actually had some high quality thoughtful reviews. Plus I would actually enjoy reading them. and people will actually be able to make informative decisions about which trackers they want to join, and not just join a tracker coz it looks sweet from a few pictures.

Edit: I can't double post, but the discussion continued at another thread and I think the general conclusion is that the current standard for reviews is really low, and we need to make them the standards talked about here.

I want to hopefully restart the conversation that was happening over in VK's forum moderators suggestion, which eventually morphed into a T-I review suggestion thread. That thread was shut down in favor of this one.

Reading through this thread again, I am in violent agreement with everyone who has posted so far. Too many of T-I's reviews of trackers are basically various screenshots of trackers, which may give a potential member a general sense of the design and focus of the tracker, but otherwise fall short. The ways in which they are deficient are well documented above, but to add a quick example, I recently joined BCG. I checked out the 2010 review of BCG (written by a since-banned member, so I don't feel bad singling it out) and this review doesn't even mention BCG's innovative seed points system. This system is probably the most distinctive feature of the tracker and I'd imagine it would be of great interest to potential members, especially ones with slow upload speeds. Yet, no mention in the review.

To quickly reiterate my thoughts from the other thread, I think we should absolutely take advantage of the generosity of those T-I members who have a passion for reviews and are willing to lead the effort to upgrade T-I's reviews. The ideas from this thread could easily serve as a starting point for a new review template. I personally subscribe to JSchro's idea of a sticky thread and a point person to supervise the review process, but I certainly don't think that is the only way to get it done and welcome other suggestions. As an invites forum, having quality reviews seems like it should be a priority for the site and I hope others register their thoughts on this as well.

I think everything that needs to be said has been said, to sum it all up, we want the bar for reviews heightened, and an option to redo reviews in a higher quality level.
So far no staff has commented on this thread, What are your guys/gals thoughts?

I went to add some comments to the reviews of some trackers only to find that they were closed. Maybe if we didn't close most of the reviews then someone can write a better review (or at least add to it). Its not as an attractive alternative as one big fancy review but it will be less work for the mods and admins who probably have a lot on their hands already to read through and filter out every new review that gets posted. I think people should be able to discuss the tracker in the tracker review thread rather than just rely on one origional poster and expecting them to hit every aspect of a site in their article.