According to you, what is a tracker actually worth joining ?

[buttnudge]

First some personal context.

At some point in my life I remember having like 40+ different bookmarks of private trackers and credentials in LastPass for each of these. I probably only used What.cd once in a while or PTP in case I was having problems with the seeds for similar torrents with the same content on public trackers. In the end I barely used any of those and it was more of a collection, life went on, what.cd died ( really loved the forum ) and I eventually just abandoned most of those. Now I guess you could make the case for having all these in a situation where you have a whole setup with Xarr and friends ( Sonarr, Radarr ) but most people who end up in this situation don't, I think, I have no way of finding if this affirmation is valid.

Today I've replaced what.cd with the RateYourMusic forums and a Soulseek which even at what.cd's peak had stuff not available on what.cd ( probably due to stringent rules, but what's the f-ing point of having all these rules when it goes to shitter once every X years )

What according to you is a private tracker most worth joining as a proper user of a private torrent tracker ?

[FubareD]

Hello and welcome to the site.

I've had some similar experiences in the past related to what you mention. Having tons of accounts of which almost none of them were being used or were actually worth it.

Really deppends on the content you need, since you mentioned music mainly. Altough you already have a replacement, I highly recommend downloading from Deezer or Qobuz.
This site explains how to download (lossless without quality loss) from the nowdays streaming sites: https://rentry.org/firehawk52

In case you need some other material, like Movies/TV/Games. I would just aim for Torrentleech and go by my day. It's all you need. Maybe throw in IPT or RuTracker to complement. But thats it!

[buttnudge]

Thanks. Sorry for not being more clear but I'm actually interested in your take on this. If you had to delete all private trackers but keep one. Which one would you keep and for what reason ?

[FubareD]

I'd keep TorrentLeech as a private site. Rutracker (public) as a backup.
TL or IPT (its about prefference), I like TL the most. It's got everything you could ever need, easy to buffer, its got the whole combo on one site.

[anon]

As I see it, there are two questions you should ask yourself.

1. Am I getting the content I want with the memberships I already have?
2. If there are "better" places, are they worth the effort I must make to join them and maintain an account there?

In my case, I found that FL, IPT, RuTracker and PornoLab were enough for me to answer "yes" and "no" respectively, and I've been on most elite trackers past and present (I also use Nyaa, AnimeTosho and Usenet, but those are beyond the scope of this discussion). Others don't need any private trackers or even torrents at all to reach that point. Here's some reading to help you decide.

https://www.sb-innovation.de/showthread.php?t=34999
https://www.sb-innovation.de/showthread.php?t=17788 (look, it's what you just asked )
https://www.sb-innovation.de/showthread.php?t=18575

If you ultimately take the recruitment route, that's fine, but keep in mind: climbing the ranks and competing against seedboxes takes time, money and effort you won't get any refunds on. Recruiters can take months to respond, change requirements or stop recruiting while you're halfway through. The tracker you're buffing your account on could shut down. The one you want to join could do the very same... and if you finally manage to get in, you could lose access at any time because a mod didn't like something you said/did, someone on an invite selling forum used a name similar to yours, you were on the "wrong" DHCP pool, or a variety of other bullshit reasons.

[buttnudge]

As I see it, there are two questions you should ask yourself.

1. Am I getting the content I want with the memberships I already have?
2. If there are "better" places, are they worth the effort I must make to join them and maintain an account there?

In my case, I found that FL, IPT, RuTracker and PornoLab were enough for me to answer "yes" and "no" respectively, and I've been on most elite trackers past and present (I also use Nyaa, AnimeTosho and Usenet, but those are beyond the scope of this discussion). Others don't need any private trackers or even torrents at all to reach that point. Here's some reading to help you decide.

Yes, I get it but if I could just argue in an uncharitable way for one second, did you at any point in the last year find yourself reaching out to these because you didn't find what you were looking for on public trackers or do you just go to them by default ?

https://www.sb-innovation.de/showthread.php?t=34999
https://www.sb-innovation.de/showthread.php?t=17788 (look, it's what you just asked )
https://www.sb-innovation.de/showthread.php?t=18575

I'll take a look. Thanks. I didn't search because I wanted a more current view of things. Tell me if I should just necrobump in the future.

If you ultimately take the recruitment route, that's fine, but keep in mind: climbing the ranks and competing against seedboxes takes time, money and effort you won't get any refunds on. Recruiters can take months to respond, change requirements or stop recruiting while you're halfway through. The tracker you're buffing your account on could shut down. The one you want to join could do the very same... and if you finally manage to get in, you could lose access at any time because a mod didn't like something you said/did, someone on an invite selling forum used a name similar to yours, you were on the "wrong" DHCP pool, or a variety of other bullshit reasons.

I consider this valid and I'm trying to avoid doing this again.

[anon]

did you at any point in the last year find yourself reaching out to these because you didn't find what you were looking for on public trackers

Stuff goes unseeded or never gets uploaded in the first place, and for warez in particular, I find private sites to be much more trustworthy. The accounts for which the answer to your question was no were all trimmed over time (as commented on one of the linked discussions, having multiple ones of the same category adds to "maintenance" costs while giving diminishing returns).

Tell me if I should just necrobump in the future.

That's usually a bad idea unless there's something really important you want to clarify or add and it hasn't already been done on other threads.

I consider this valid and I'm trying to avoid doing this again.

For what it's worth, statistically speaking, everything I just mentioned is unlikely... and trackers would suck if no one uploaded anything because they could lose their accounts at any moment. But unlikely doesn't mean 0% and that's something you should account for.