The KaraGarga Manifesto
KaraGarga strives to be more than just a regular BitTorrent tracker for movies.
We are an exclusive private filesharing community focused on creating a comprehensive library of Arthouse, Cult, Classic, Experimental and rare movies from all over the world.
Here is how we aim to achieve that goal:
- Do not allow Hollywood/Bollywood mainstream.
From its inception, KaraGarga was designed as a source for non-mainstream and off-beat movies. We try to distance ourselves from the pervasive and easily available Hollywood (and Bollywood) mainstream and show people that a huge and exciting world of cinema exists beyond that. Therefore we do not allow any mainstream movies on the tracker.
The definition of "mainstream" is very elusive and almost impossible to state precisely. It is within the discretion of the tracker moderators to decide on each specific case. As a general rule, we limit our definition of mainstream to Hollywood and Bollywood movies made after the 70s. Classic Hollywood movies are allowed and welcome - even though some of them may enjoy mainstream popularity, we have high respect for their artistic quality and importance in cinema history. We draw the line with the advent of the big-buget Hollywood blockbuster (with movies like Jaws and Star Wars) which brought on a rapid deterioration in the quality of movies. Modern independent productions are allowed and we might make special exceptions for new Hollywood movies from special directors. Also allowed are most "mainstream" movies from other countries - what might be a common mainstream movie in Hungary might be totally unknown elsewhere.
We are well aware that the enforcement of this rule makes a subjective judgment on the artistic quality of a movie that some people are bound to disagree with. However, this rule is the very foundation which has made KaraGarga such a distinguished source for high-class world cinema.
- Build a library by never deleting movie torrents and making reseeds as easy as possible.
We want the KaraGarga tracker ideally to be like a library, so that anytime you wish to see a particular movie you can just look it up and download it. Unfortunately one of the big disadvantages of the BitTorrent p2p system is that most torrent swarms die off relatively quickly, mostly because people do not have any incentive to keep torrents seeded.
Other trackers would just delete those dead torrents. We on the other hand have set out to change that. In general, we do not delete any movie torrents and we do not consider old torrents to be "dead". They are just unseeded at the moment. If a torrent has been unseeded for two days with no activity, a big red button on the top of the torrent details page allows you to request a reseed for the torrent. All reseed requests are recorded all reseed requests that you can personally help out with (i.e. torrents which you have downloaded). If you reseed a torrent for which a reseed has been requested you are automatically awarded a ratio bonus. In addition, keeping any torrent seeded in your BT client gives you an extra seeding bonus once someone starts downloading it.
The combination of reseed requests and the various bonuses have created an extremely effective mechanism that allows even long-dead torrents to be resurrected swiftly. You can put in a reseed request and usually find the torrent seeded the next day. This is aided by KaraGarga being a private tracker - users have to maintain a ratio and thus have a strong incentive to keep torrents seeded and help out with reseeds in order to collect ratio bonuses. Also, all users who have downloaded a particular torrent ("snatchers") are recorded, allowing the reseed request system to identify who can help out reseed which torrent. Even if your reseed request goes unanswered for a while, the friendly and helpful culture at KaraGarga allows you to just send a message to some of the recent snatchers of a torrent and get it reseeded that way as well.
In order to make reseeds even more powerful, KaraGarga has implemented a unique feature called torrent bumping. If one user reseeds a torrent for another user, usually noone else will notice. The resulting exchange then resembles traditional ineffective one-on-one filesharing. Therefore, if a torrent which has been unseeded for a long time is reseeded, we "bump" it to the top of the torrent list (MoM torrents are bumped if they had been unseeded for over 30 days; torrents with reseed-requests are bumped instantly no matter how long they've been unseeded; if there was no reseed request the bump time is 90 days). All users will see the bumped torrent appear on the top of the browse page as if it were newly uploaded. To distinguish it from new torrents, it is marked
[BUMPED]. That way the reseeding of a torrent will be noticed by many more users and create a larger swarm.
- Provide extensive information on each movie torrent.
Since every new movie torrent enters the KaraGarga library and will remain there for a long time, we would like each one to have as detailed a description as possible. Thus we make it mandatory for each torrent to include complete rip specifications of the movie file (allowing users to judge if that file will be playable on their playback device) and at least three screenshots directly from the file (allowing users to judge the quality of the encoding). We also strongly encourage users to include plot descriptions, review(s), a movie poster and additional outside links which offer more information for each upload.
- Emphasize rip quality and completeness of extra material.
At KaraGarga we strive for all movie torrents to be encoded in the best quality possible (usually a 2cd XviD encode) while allowing for the highest level of playback compatibility (i.e. incompatible formats like x264 or mkv are discouraged). While we do not allow any duplicate uploads of the same movie, we will allow a low-quality 1cd rip to be replaced by a higher-quality 2cd rip. Torrents with a full DVD-R of a movie are allowed to exist alongside an XviD/DivX encode since they both service users with different needs.
Other criteria that make for a higher-quality torrent and a welcome replacement include: If the torrent is sourced from a higher-quality source than the existing one (e.g. a DVD with better picture quality than the other DVD release), if it is in the correct aspect ratio (e.g. a widescreen version to replace a cropped fullscreen one), if it offers removable subtitles instead of hardcoded ones, if it offers the original audio track instead of a dubbed one or if it includes additional extras like an audio commentary, a making-of etc.
In order to prevent generally poor quality uploads, if a movie is available on DVD, rips from a lower-quality source (e.g. from a VHS) are not allowed. We also do not allow any rips of a new movie until a DVD is actually commercially available in stores since most of those rips come from poor quality sources (anything from CAMs recorded off the screen in a movie theatre to poor quality R5 DVDs thrown onto the market prematurely which is where many pre-retail scene DVDrips come from).
- Promote broadening cinematic knowledge through Master Of The Month (MoM) program and movie collections.
KaraGarga offers you many opportunities to extend your horizons and learn more about the cinema of other countries and cultures. One of it is the Master Of The Month (MoM) program. Each month, a specific topic (e.g. a director, an actor, a country, a theme) is chosen as a MoM for both movies and for music.
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