November 08, 2010 by sharky
What if the BitTorrent community got together and pooled their information to catch invite traders, sellers and ratio cheaters? The concept itself isn’t a new one; in fact a system already exists between private trackers. It’s known that What.CD offers resources to tracker sysops & admins to catch & remove bad torrenters, available to those of the "Torrent Celebrity" userclass. That’s great for trackers, but bad BT behavior often begins well in advance of finding tracker invites. Unfortunately most Torrent Forum staffers are unable to access those tracker-to-tracker blacklists. Yet, as often is the case, bad members on torrent forums are the same as those found on trackers themselves - and are banned for exactly the same reasons. Is there a similar system set up that caters exclusively to torrent forum staff to share internal info amongst each other? Not until now.
Rapscallion.info aims to fill a void between non-trading torrent forums, in order to allow different forum staff to discuss & communicate on the topics below. For the rest of this article we’ll let Thatch, an administrator from Rapscallion to fill in the finer details:
Rapscallion’s Goal: We are here to create a community of members joined together with one common idea. We want to prevent members who do not belong in the torrent community from joining sites that other people who should, can’t. While there are trackers out there who do not approve of sites such as invite forums, they need to understand that most are not out to ruin their trackers. Most hold the beliefs that trading, selling, and cheating is bad. And that brings us to who can join.
The idea is that any invite forums that follow the beliefs of no trading, no selling, no giving away accounts, no cheating, and none of that such stuff can join. If the site allows that, they obviously cannot join, being that they stand for what this site is trying to remove.
The limited number of boards right now, is due to us creating them as sites come in. When a forum joins up, we give them a special user class based on their position there at their respective forum, and we give them the forum board with their sites name on it. They can then discuss things about their forum, problems, ideas, anything of that nature. We also have a board for the members that we are out to prevent from continuing to join sites such as invite forums and private trackers. Basically, it has the norms of a site, general discussion areas, news, and other odds and ends, but the rest is going to come with the community.
As for private trackers; if the private tracker is a site that is acceptable of invite forums, and willing to accept them being out there, and have no problem with members using them to get into their sites, then they are also accepted. That is a very helpful thing, as it will help with invite forums preventing members at the lowest level, which is, when they are attempting to get into such sites. It could potentially help the bridge between such sites (trackers and forums) as they could see that some are there for good reasons. That end goal, of the bridge between them, is a long way off though, as right now, the primary focus is on the bad users.
Right now, the Admins and creators of the site are two members who have been on a number of invite forums, and seen that the thing that happens to most of them, is a user will get banned on one, and go to another. Now hopefully, that user will get banned on that one as well. But people slip between the cracks and a cheater may snag that SCC invite or something of that nature from the new forum and not get caught. That’s where we came up with the idea. We really aren’t here to do much administrating, besides creating forums as necessary, applying the appropriate user classes to the new members, listening to suggestions and implementing them if they are good ideas, and finally just making sure the sites get along with each other in this endeavor. Beyond that, we are basically an outside observer who is letting the site go. The members basically run the site.
How to Join Rapscallion:
Torrent Invite forums can join, provided they meet the above criteria about not trading and such, by sending an email to:
rapscallion.info@gmail.com
From there, they must state the site they represent, their username on said site, and their userclass (ie Mod, Admin, etc) A screenshot of proof must also be given so I know that they aren’t just an ordinary member attempting to gain access. Basically, a screenshot of something only that logged in user could have. Forum owners/admins will be admitted in, no problem, upon meeting this criteria. Forum Moderators either have to already have one of the above from their site on here, or I have to hear from them that they are going to allow the moderators to represent the site. I don’t need members of sites getting on hear without the main runners of the sites allowing it and then instantly getting off on the wrong foot with them. From there they will get an invite code for their specific user class, and be good to go.
Another method can be IRC. IRC will also be a good way to collaborate together instantly. Could be a great addition to help do what the site already does.
Server: irc.rapscallion.info
The channel for registering will be #registration (it may or may not be active at the time of this article). If I am there, it is a one-on-one alternative to registering. But same criteria still apply.
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