Hi blackdid,
of course (!) I have tried media info (and use it myself too) - but alas we got no permission to offer it as a download in our forum. One of the cases where I did not even get as reply from the authors :(.
We can only offer programs in our download section where we have the copyright (like QTM) or (our own "restrictions") which are free-ware and for which we have permission to distribute the program in our free download area.
I had to vote "no opinion" - although I have a definite opinion about that topic.
I have read a lot of opinions in this thread - all with very good reasons - as well as pro details and contra details about used codecs and/or other quality oriented information about uploads. I'd prefer a poll option like "strongly recommend" such information because I see the argument of that missing information as well as the problem to make such information mandatory.
I can't agree with making such information mandatory - we (staff) have to much work already with approving new uploads. Mandatory means (if my dictionary is correct) that a torrent without such information has to be disapproved. Do we really want that? I do NOT!
I also agree with the wish that big pictures on a .rmvb (my pet hate codec 
) video in a resolution of 90 x 120 px is really a misleading "information" - I just don't know how to avoid such "misinformation" - when we wrote in our FAQ and upload guide to avoid descriptions like "hot" or other meaningless "descriptions". If we really would have to disapprove all such bad descriptions - I guess we would only have 10 percent of our current torrent offers 
What I can't really understand though: in our download area we have a program GSpot which offers a lot of information about videos but was downloaded only 43 times. OK ok ok - I DO know that it is an old program - but alas other program authors of suggested Codec-detection programs I have contacted did not give the permission to offer their (freeware) programs for downloading in our forum I don't know only very few reasons (I often did not get any response) but the reasons given were usually the fear that not updated versions were offered - but there were also reasons the authors did not wish their programs offered on a gay site much less on a torrent site <sigh>.
Well - we have to deal with that - but nonetheless - I can recommend Gspot to find out details about most uploaded files and strongly encourage all uploaders to use those details in their descriptions.</sigh>
what's rtfm? report to forum moderator?
Read The Fucking Manual
a phrase a lot of people in tech support everywhere often need to remind themselves they aren't allowed to use.
Well - let's use the "political correct" version: Read The Fine Manual At least that is the version our smiley is supposed to say
@Uwe:
…
I believe this discussion is important because it could lead to something beyond racial categories or something better than ~Caucasians that means people who have traditionally associated those living in the Western part of the Northern Hemisphere.
...I support fully the above statement, that was the only thing intended by me.
If we all can agree that this discussion is only about category-names or search-tags and nobody intends to have a discussion about racism or something similar nor insists on his own understanding of political correntness which has to be applied also on gay-porn classification: Thank you guys - I can sleep a bit calmer in the future
Hi guys,
PLEASE calm down a bit - all of you who offer their opininions about this "race" discussions. Please understand one thing as the most important thing about our torrent categories and/or search tags: They are not meant as an exact ethnological/geographical/ <put here="" what="" you="" like="">exact definition. Not at all. At the start of this site we just had around 10 different categories which have now grown to 30 - and there is a problem now rising how to distinguish a new category from the existing ones. Just an example from our recent staff discussion. How to distinguish men from the (now come just geographical terms:)western Asian lets say from turkey up to the (still to be defined) border to east Asia (China, Japan, … as an example) but including north-afrika ? IMHOthose people in the named regions have a lot of similarities which differ from east-asian people.
Now: How to name such a category so that all of our members have a "correct" understanding which type of men are meant to be found in such a category? If we include the "political correctness" in such a debate - been there, done that - hopeless. If we additionally add the topic of "racism" in such a debate: a flame war is approaching all of us.
Please, be also aware the most Europeans (geographically only) and especially Germans have a lot of problems with such terms. Calling "us" racists has (even today) a very strong pejorative background for us who did not yet forget the past from 60 years ago - real Nazism from where a lot of people still have inherited their aversion against racist discussions - in Germany we had those bad discussions more than enough in the past since 1930 or even 1920)! Sorry, but also that is part of the current discussion, at least below the surface.
I admit too that political correctness might be a good thing - I just think that term should belong to the department politics or politicians - not to a gay BitTorrent site.
Bottom line: we should try to find (in this case) a search tag which can rather exactly describe what is meant to be found when you use such a tag but not express any racist or pejorative meaning.
Because the topic arose in this discussion earlier: the current torrent categories / search tags are not meant to express racism or insults - but to express a difference in appearance at the first glance - to express it a bit more "political correct".
BTW: the "political correctness" especially in Germany gets more absurd each and every day. Not only new words are invented "Kanzlerin" for "Kanzler" (female chancellor (chanceloress?) instead of chancellor), there are no foreigners any longer in Germany, only "people with migration background" ..., this list of political correctness is endless - I ask a native German speaker to give me a political correct English translation for the former "Negerkuss" or even a former "Mohrenkopf" !!!). I don't intend to continue that list with our categories or search tags :)</put>
[off-topic]
@Uwe:
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1
00:00:21,000 --> 00:00:24,400
Uwe is a stupid guy2
00:00:50,000 --> 00:00:53,000
No, I am not
...
I was pondering seriously to give you at least a forum warning because of insulting a staff member in public  :rotfl:
[/off-topic]
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That aside, I'm either missing something central in this whole debate
...I assume (because I couldn't find data to the contrary) that 1 gb upload is worth the same to the seeder regardless of whether or not someone else is seeding the same torrent at the same time. 1 gb up = 1 gb up, yes?
...
Looks like that (the 2nd cited paragrap) is what you missed. If (as Uwe already mentioned) the "jumper" has a good bandwith and high upload speed the original uploader can't upload 1 GB because the BitTorrent protocol prefers the "jumper" with a better bandwith/upload speed. Result: the original uploader can't get 1 GB upload traffic but only a small percentage - that makes out of a 1 GB data file may be an upload traffic of only 100 MB - even less if he can't/won't seed his upload continuously for the first time. That is the main promblem with members jumping on a fresh upload.
@ultimate:
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At least, your boss is not around like at work...
Well - at least he reads nearly everything in our forum
@ultimate:
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breaking always your balls ...
Well - when we exchange breaking by touching/licking/…: Not because of the lack of desire to do so, more due to the distance
…
The main problem is that the vast majority of members don't, or can't, visit the Forum _..
…Well - if you had used our help desk (or our chat) to ask that question - my reply template is the same since 2008 (when I was promoted to admin) and used thousands of times in the meantime.
Sometimes I ask myself: how the f*** are users able to direct a simple support question (which btw can easily be answered when that users read the low-ratio warning they got) directly to an admin (in spite of the warning to don't do so) but are not able to ask why a menu item does not work for them???_
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I'm glad you wrote "staff can see which program is actively seeding/leeching a torrent when the program is actively seeding/leeching[1])" , even if "there is another problem with this information"
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That is only one of our problems. The next problem is that users often do not have a clue how to set their clients, to close them properly, …
And even to a simple question like "which torrent client do you use" is often answered with "Windows media player".
Well - a bit off topic though - but nonetheless:
The current client program has nothing to do with the program that created the torrent itself, you can seed a torrent with whichever client you like - so that asked question question still makes sense (although staff can see which program is actively seeding/leeching a torrent when the program is actively seeding/leeching [nb]although there is another problem with this information: some (cheating) clients try to make their own tracks invisible and don't announce their ID to our tracker - which is a break of the rules for the BitTorrent protocol, some others allow you to fake either a well known existing ID of another program or let the user set an own ID :([/nb]). QTM uses a (non mandatory) comment field in the torrent file to mark the origin of that torrent - but the content of that comment is not clearly "defined" Nonetheless: what sense does it make when you know which program created the torrent file? Not much if you ask me - there is no additional diagnosis in this information. Just a possibility to gather a statistic about how many of our torrents were created by QTM.
Well - after some time: Did the manual upload work for you? I'm glad you discovered the easiness of QTM/uTorrent so early
I completely agree with you - especially with your last paragraph which I quote to impress the importance of good quality videos opposed to convenient(?) smaller downloads!
As memory gets cheaper and bandwidths get wider, better quality, larger sized torrents make more sense to me. If given a choice, I prefer to download a high quality version, knowingly spending the space, time and bandwidth resources to do so. I find it ironic that in a time of high definition, we're willing to give up quality for convenience as I do with Netflix streaming.)
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Is such activity on a volunteer basis, or can we "voluntell" someone into it? hehe
As long as there is no fighting about that "decision" At least none of which I have to know about :lolp:
Hi Guys - now that I have been asked I have to say something too
As a first thing: I strongly believe that all humans are kind of voyeuristic - not only in sexual matters but also in a lot of other regards: Just take the scene where people nearly fight to have a good view of the place where something (f.x. a car crash, flooding, Vulcan eruption, … ) has happened. I'm not going to even guess how many handy cam photos or even videos are taken in such situations.
Such voyeuristic behavior is (more often than not) generally frowned upon - in some cases that may cost the lives of hurt people.
In that line of thought we have to see voyeurism in sexual matters too. (At least I do ). Nothing, absolutely nothing is bad with voyeurism in itself unless (see above).
So what about voyeuristic videos on our site? As a non written rule our staff tolerates spy cam videos. Especially if it is not really clear if a "professional produced" spy cam video is really hurting people (especially those which were "secretly" (?) filmed and get their revenues for that filming).
Another line of though now comes with real amateur spy cam videos - the topic of privacy. I have a lot of problems when I get a member complaint about a torrent captured from xtube, cam4, ...! If I want to keep my videos private I can't publish them myself and complain later on about piracy or illegality - that is the same complaint like those from well known other porn studios which complain about piracy
OK - so much to my opinion about voyeuristic videos. As to a SIG (to come back to the original topic again): I have nothing against a SIG where voyeuristic issues are the topic of discussion, photos, ... ). As I said before there is nothing wrong with voyeurism at all[nb]I am the last one to criticize sexual preferences - I'm also working on our straight site SexTorrents.ru :)[/nb] - just be aware that there is a thin border between accepted voyeurism and break of privacy.
As another important requirement for such a SIG there must be sure that there is at least one member which (not only feels but) is responsible for maintaining such a SIG. See this last sentence not as a threat but as an open invitation to help us to make our family (or community if you like that expression better) even more attractive for all of us.
As a first thing let me say thank you for your donation
You might see it correct that a donation will not correct your ratio directly - but there is one logical error in your calculation: You did not take in account the traffic for your downloads (and what you get for that traffic) in your calculation
Your ratio is depends on two figures, your upload traffic and your download traffic - (mathematically: Ratio = UL / DL).
a donation gives you upload traffic - the other figure (your download traffic) is only changed by your downloaded traffic (and your desire to download more videos). So I can't see that donation is more expensive the more you downloaded - did you not get something else for your downloads (like videos you like?)
We never said (or promised) that a donation will increase your ratio directly. In the opposite: we invested a lot of thinking, discussions and work to implement our sliding ratio scale and the new designed donation page too where the effects of a donation can be seen directly before you really donate.
Just think if we promised a direct ratio correction - if that is fair??? I think NOT.
I can't change the mathematical rules about big numbers: 2 GB for 5 EUR seems quite a lot if you have a download traffic of  4 GB (it's  half of your download traffic) and will raise a (theoretical ratio of 0.000) from 0.000 to 0.500. Now imagine the same case with (also just a theoretical construction) when the user has already downloaded 2 TB - a ratio raise from 0.000 to 0.500 in this case will require an upload traffic of 2 TB (2048 GB) also for 5 EUR ???
I can't see that as fair, not towards site owner (who has to pay the server and traffic costs) and especially not towards our users who fight with their ratio
I can only recommend to read the donation page thoroughly, you can always play around with the donation amounts and see what influence a donation of a certain amount has on your ratio (before you click on the button "donate <amount>now at our partner site"). Don't forget: if you are below your minimum ratio there is an extra button (below 250 EUR) for a needed donation to reach your minimum ratio - so please don't say we did not try to help our users.
Now some other remarks to your posting:
The link you gave to the rationator 2.1 thread is long since outdated (posted on: May 01, 2008, 04:27:22 am), my answer to that initial postings will send you to the correct thread (http://forum.gaytorrent.ru/index.php?topic=6191.0)
Did you ever consider to upload a new video to our tracker? Not only will that give you some upload traffic (without download traffic), even more: since our members can say thank you and can award seed bonus points to your upload that is a really good method to gain [desc=Seed Bonus Pints]SBP[/desc] which you also can exchange into upload traffic!
Did you ever consider to spend some more time in the forum and take part in some forum games (where you can also win SBP or join the uploader programs which some of our moderators established? Again you can get some SBP in those programs.
Did you ever consider to take part in some extra contest on our site (the last one - holiday recipes - is still announced on our home page). Also there you could win upload traffic as prizes.
BTW: how come that most of our members manage to keep a ratio above their minimum ratio without ever having donated? Our old (and often posted) first aid for ratio problems comes to mind: seed, seed, seed.
Edit: did you understand that our site is about sharing, not about buying? You don't "buy" download traffic but we expect from you that you share what you got for free (!). At your start we don't set strong limits for your minimum ratio - but after some time (depending on your download traffic) we except that you understand the (might be outdated) concept of sharing.</amount>
I have no problems with others jumping on my torrents. It simply means that others can download faster.
That again depends on a lot of factors. If the "jumping on" one has a good upload speed (like a server based seedbox) that might become disastrous for your upload traffic and thus to your ratio. (unless you decide to seed for a very long time - and that means in the range of several months - not hours ).
…
I have not been a member for long, but in my experience the seed bonus given to me as the torrent uploader has probably been more useful then the actual amount I have uploaded.
...
an often neglected bonus for uploaders!
Consider the new user who has submitted a torrent and after waiting 10, 12 hours or more sees you come along with auto-approval and upload the exact same torrent he has waiting. He put just as much time and effort into getting the torrent ready as you did. Don't you think it is fair that he should be able to upload as well?
That is a topic which is already handled by our approving moderators. If there is such a "duplicate" upload coincidence (and they happen quite often ) the original upload time is taken into account: even if it took two days (holidays f.x.) to approve a torrent we still know which torrent was uploaded first and that one counts as the original.
As there is no easy technical solution to control the jump-on, why not just embrace it.
That is the reason we don't have written rules about that topic yet. We can just ask our members to not "jump on" a torrent until it is snatched some times (at least 3 other seeders). That time span gives the original uploader some time to reach at least traffic for one complete copy of the uploaded video. Later on "jumping on" is something else. But there is no technical possibility to enforce such a rule - the BitTorrent protocol does not allow stopping a seeder from seeding (the only way to stop a member from seeding would be to ban the respective account - not a good solution methinks )
I have to apologize now - sorry for my missing picture about the first security question
As an excuse I can only say: that security question (expired certificate IIRC) was (some months ago) shown every time when the applet was loaded - now in one of the last updates they obviously remember you answer for the future because that question doesn't show up any longer (might also be the cause is upgrading Opera to Version 11).
Bottom line: this (former) annoying security warning has silently gone
Let me say it again:
re-seed does not mean re-upload!!!
re-seeding means to just actively seed the old torrent in your client. If you don't have the old torrent file any longer - just re-download the torrent file again from our tracker (you can re-download your already completely snatched torrents even if your download rights are taken away). There is no upload involved in re-seeding an existing torrent thus the question of duplicate uploads is not relevant. There is no difference in your upload traffic if you re-seed an existing torrent or upload a new torrent.