Posts made by urx585

@amphboy said in Why is everything new being deleted from the "Fan Sites" category?:

PUBLIC

@amphboy - what public tracker did you use? Thanks!

I think something is wrong with the upload function.  This site usually gets between 10 and 30 new torrents per hour and we've only seen a few in the last ten hours.  If you haven't already done it, you can submit a Helpdesk ticket… although the operators probably know something is wrong by now 

SYNONYMES is about an Israeli emigre's first experiences in Paris.  In an interview, director Nadav Lapid said the only romantic relationship was between the two male leads.  The actors do a good job creating lots of steamy homoerotic tension.  It was nominated for an LGBT film award.  It opens with an extended scene of the fit young Israeli actor stroking his semi-erect cock, moving around the apartment, taking a shower, always naked.

It was uploaded here at least a dozen times, in different sizes and formats, and several torrents are still active, with plenty of seeders.

Do you want to grab it?

You can't.  Every torrent of SYNONYMES is now marked "NO THEMED" [sic] so nobody can download them.

I checked gay-torrents.net, there are three active torrents there.  The site has no minimum ratio, and anyone can create an account.  Search for "SYNONYM*" (no quotes) to see all of them.

Hello kalayaan, thanks for replying!

Yes, input means suggestions, and the four proposals I made are just suggestions, nothing more.

And I agree with everything you wrote.

Mod 2222 is competent as he can be

Yes, I agree, and if you read through this thread, I have not said anything bad about 2222.

"Cultural competency" is a well-defined term in anthropology.  It has absolutely nothing to do with general competency of any sort – intelligence, education, work ethic, professional experience, board certifications, etc.  It has no relation to any of these.  I should not have used it.  I didn't know it was an obscure term.  "Culturally aware" is much better, thank you bc22!

You become "culturally aware" by growing up singing the same nursery rhymes with the other children.  For most of us, that was one language and one culture.  A foreigner can acquire some of this later, with great effort, but they'll never have grown up watching the same ads on TV.

More diversity, more inclusion, more interesting films and shows from more countries and languages, that is what I am suggesting.

I stand by his sound decision.

Please help me understand this.  Decision to remove UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG, or decisions in general?

I hope the research we did is enough to convince you that UMBRELLAS is gay enough to stay... even if it's just to humor our beloved French compatriots.  Vive la France!

If you're talking about decisions in general, I agree with you.  The vast majority of 2222's decisions are sound, sensible, sober, and suited to the situation.  We have only argued about a few of those decisions, and they were mostly about French films.

I agree with the last two replies.

Yes, me too.

The question is, by what mechanism do we implement cinemacapman and eobox91103's excellent summations of this forum:

"if someone can make a valid and reasonably logical defense for something being here […] then it should be left alone"

and

"one of the day players in scene 241 was gay in real life doesn't cut it"

I think we should gather these logical defenses via the forum, then determine their validity through discussion, hopefully with a very diverse group of commentators.

(And then the private site owner(s) will do whatever they want to.)

I want to thank everyone again!  I have the soul of a librarian, so I want to preserve and archive everything that is important to us.  You've helped me see some different perspectives on what is and isn't important.

Love the photo! 

I am arguing that historic films that are essential to gay culture and drag culture should be allowed, despite not being explicitly gay-themed.

The elements of an 80's-themed party are hairspray, shoulder pads, and British New Wave music.  Those elements are part of the 80's.  The theme is comprised of the elements.

If this film is "certainly a major element of French gay culture", then it is gay in and of itself.  It is gay because the French gays appropriated it, i.e. they took it for themselves without asking permission, similar to the way English-speaking gays appropriated the word "queer".  That word is ours now.  This film is ours now.

Of course, we have to accept that the French academics know what they're talking about… but in this case, that's not such a huge stretch.

Also, I completely agree that non-French people can research and understand this film's important place in French gay culture.  It's just harder to do, because we need translation services, and we're going to miss some of the cultural references.  One of the French users who commented on the first posting of UMBRELLAS compared it to THE WIZARD OF OZ.  In my mind, this film is a concrete example, but I think I understand why you don't agree.  Part of its gayness is extrinsic and acquired, based on French gay culture's understanding and embrace of the "placardization" of the romantic relationship.

Let's see... how about DIE HARD 4?  I'm guessing the majority of GTRU users don't think it belongs here, and it probably doesn't, but the way Bruce and Justin treat each other as romantic interests is really obvious, throughout the movie.  They do the daddy/son thing perfectly and the director told them to.  Part of that effect is conveyed by subtleties in language.  I don't think it would be nearly as obvious to a person with no English who is watching it with subtitles in their native language.  If it was dubbed, the effect might disappear entirely.  Perhaps this is a concrete example of a movie with homoerotic elements that are difficult for disinterested foreigners to pick up on.

So where do you draw the line?

The rules for Themed Movies are confusing and use an undefined word, which creates gray areas that require interpretation.  I propose that GTRU users collectively know what's gay enough to belong here.  I will commit to accepting the decision of a diverse group of forum users, even if I disagree.  You and I have modeled the process I'm proposing for these types of films, in a small way:

The first user (me) made an English-language search, and found something about queerness in Demy's work, but it wasn't specific to UMBRELLAS.  The second user (you) made another English-language search, and found something that had more information (the thesis.)  The third user (me again, but it could have been anyone) made a French-language search on google.fr and found several more specific and relevant information sources about UMBRELLAS, which strongly suggest it is gay enough to clear the gray areas in the rules.

The process did not require any time or effort from a mod.

The process also showed how knowledge of the film's original language and culture helps find information sources that we can use to decide if it's gay enough.  I'm suggesting we explicitly give greater weight to the opinions of users from the film's source culture, but it might not be necessary.  If they are sharing information that the rest of us aren't aware of, their deeper knowledge will be obvious to everyone.

Of course, if the site owner(s) want to delete a torrent, they will ignore the forum decision and do whatever they want.  C'est la vie!

Thanks again for your very thoughtful comments!!!

Thanks for your very thoughtful reply.  I didn't see that thesis when I searched, but English language articles on this film are very scarce.

I'll be honest, I first saw the film when I was young, but didn't realize it was a French gay icon until it was posted here and a few French users educated us on its meaning in the gay culture of France.  Their comments were compelling and really made a lot of sense… but they are gone now, so I can't share them with you.

So why does the opinion of French users matter more, when we judge the gayness of this film?  One reason might be that any French user would search google.fr using "thèmes gay dans les parapluies de cherbourg" and they would get much more interesting results.  For instance, from French wikipedia (translated to English by google):

"Homosexual culture has appropriated Demy's work, and in particular Les Parapluie de Cherbourg.

Laurent Jullier spots some signs of male homosexuality in the film: the pink neon with curvilinear writing that indicates the toilets in the Aubain garage, an indication of improbable aesthetics in such a place; the sailor who "awaits the client under a lamppost, when Guy accompanies Geneviève home on Carmen's evening" , in a pose that Rainer-Werner Fassbinder will repeat in Querelle.

The use of bright colors and music speak to the homosexual imaginary. Another hypothesis that explains the important place of the film in gay culture, when no character is homosexual, lies in the very structure of Guy and Geneviève's love story, which, beyond the sexual orientation, would speak more to gays: the dynamic at work is that of “placardisation” , of the feeling of shame that the social norm imposes on a relationship. Geneviève, for example, must hide her love from her mother and “this instinctive way of lying, of integrating social constraints, is on the other hand immediately understandable by a gay public who lives it or" [translation cuts off here]

Here's another article that explicitly associates the film with queer elements:

https://journals.openedition.org/map/1265#tocto1n1

Excerpt (translated by google):

"In a review edited by the GKC (Gai Kitsch Camp), Q for queer, Philippe Colomb offers a "homosexual reading" of the scene, showing how much it can reveal the social pressure that the majority of homosexuals had to undergo during the 1960s in France. Our goal is not to try to identify the gay dimension in the work of Jacques Demy, to look for any hidden truth, but simply to understand how queers were able to appropriate this work, which is certainly a major element of French homosexual culture."

And now it becomes much easier to argue that a "major element of French homosexual culture" belongs on a site named gaytorrent.  It's not gay themed; it's gay.  It's gayer than Liberace snorting poppers in the back seat of a gold-plated limo with zebra-print upholstery.

Thanks!  I know a lot more about the movie now.  The research takes time, but it can be enjoyable too.  Let's have this type of discussion for every questionable film.

Here is an abstract from an article in an English-language academic journal that affirms the queerness of THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/590952/summary

There are many others, but you have to search for French-language articles.

The film was posted recently, and a few French users commented on how gay it was… but unfortunately that torrent was deleted, so I can't give you links to those comments.  The only currently active torrent does not contain the comments from French GTRU users.

Your comments are very sensible and I don't disagree with you.  I just ask: what's the harm in having it available here, too?  It's gay enough.  There are other torrent sites for movies but why send people elsewhere?

Fair enough!  I can't guarantee my position is based entirely on reason.  I love the film.  I don't think it is gay-themed; it's clearly not.

But it is gay.  It is really, really gay, like Scott Thompson wearing a pink tutu and sipping a Cosmo while listening to Peggy Lee and smoking a Capri 120.

I have a pink t-shirt that says "Run, Toto, Run!" across the front, printed in a slightly darker shade of pink.  THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG is way, way gayer than that shirt.

And a lot of French GTRU users will agree with me on this.  So I ask: what's the harm in keeping it on the site?  If there is an issue, it will be deleted by DMCA.  If you or me or anyone else, including moderators, think it's not gay enough to stay here, we can start a forum discussion for it.  All I ask is that the opinion of French GTRU users be given extra weight, because they are the most culturally aware of the film's context.

Does that sound reasonable to you?

This thread is puttering out, but I want to thank everyone who contributed.  I admit I started this thread in a fit of pique over the idea that THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG wasn't gay enough for this site, especially since we have so many French members… and anger is not a good starting point.  But thanks to this discussion, I've learned a lot about how to make these suggestions most effectively.  At some point, I'll re-write these proposals to be as simple, easy to understand, and compelling as possible, then post a new thread.

There are a few loose ends I'd like to tie up.  I'd appreciate your thoughts on these:

1. We should use the torrent comment box to discuss these things.

The same movie can be posted many times, so a single forum topic would be much easier to read and contribute to than hunting for all the torrents of that movie, living and dead, and reading each set of comments separately.

2. Posters should describe these things better.

Amen, brethren.  But they don't, and this isn't going to change.  I used to always comment "Are there subtitles?" whenever someone posted a non-English language film, if they didn't indicate it in the description.  I'd get a reply less than half of the time.  I've pretty much given up.  When other users post questions like this, I sometimes grab the movie then answer them myself, knowing that the Uploader will never respond.

The rules for torrent descriptions used to be much stricter, too.  As this site has allowed more poorly-described torrents, we've seen a tremendous increase in the quantity of torrents.  It's much easier for people to upload, especially if they have very little English, so they do it more often.  We're getting much more awesome content, but the price we pay is poor descriptions.  I don't know any way around this, except to work together as a community to improve the descriptions that uploaders can't or won't add themselves.

In general, I would always prefer having a poorly-described ultra-rare movie versus not having anything at all.  Do you disagree?

3. We can use google searches to figure out if a movie is gay enough for this site.

Couple of issues with this.  I've been searching for descriptions of weird / rare / foreign films for a long time, and for many of them, there is not much English language information on the web.  There may be articles in the original language, but they can be very difficult to find (you have to search with the movie's original title in the original script, not the westernized title in Roman characters) and they are not in English (and google translate only works with major language groups.)  So there are going to be lots of rare films that really are gay enough to belong here, but google won't tell us.  But... we have so many users from such diverse backgrounds!  Tapping into that resource will give us all the information we need.

Second, the LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD (DIE HARD 4) problem.  The director made comments similar to those from the directors of SYNONYMES and THE LIGHTHOUSE.  The director told Bruce and Justin to treat each other as romantic interests.  It's really obvious when you watch the film, they have great chemistry and they get a daddy/twink thing going.  Justin's character's sexual orientation is never defined.  By the standards given in previous posts on this thread, google says it belongs here.  Do you agree?  (I suspect most members don't think it's gay enough, and having a forum topic for that movie would be the perfect place to build a consensus and make a shared decision.)

Similarly, while I agree that THE COMMISH (yuck) doesn't belong here, if you google "gay themes in the commish", in the first five results is a Wikipedia entry that says: "List of 1990s American television episodes with LGBT themes".  So according to google/wikipedia, THE COMMISH is LGBT themed, and belongs here.  If we had a forum to discuss this, raphjd and myself could argue against that.

4. Doing google searches and reading articles about gay themes in a movie is faster than creating a forum and putting a link to that forum in the comments.

Research takes time.  Creating a forum topic and adding a generic comment and link would take less than a minute.  Then, members can do their own searches, and post the links to the articles in the forum, if anyone wants to spend the extra time reading them.

5. Google can help with the gray areas.

Like: what separates a major character from a minor one, do repressed/in-denial characters count as gay, what specific quantity of gay content is necessary to differentiate between gay-interest (not a real word) and gay-themed, etc.

raphjd is the only contributor who even tried to give some hard answers to these questions.  Quote:

A single gay character on screen for 15 seconds doesn't count.  
A group of gays on screen for 30 seconds doesn't count.

I agree entirely, and so will everyone else, because these are obvious.  Unfortunately, these lower-bound limits do not give us any information about the upper bound.  For instance, a gay character that is on screen for 16 seconds, or a group of gays on screen for 31 seconds, probably doesn't count, either.

Gray areas are real.  Gray areas are a matter of interpretation.  Crowd-sourcing works.  The opinion of many GTRU users will be superior to the opinion of any one user.

When a film that is in one or more of these gray areas is posted, I think we should discuss it, reach some sort of consensus, then make a keep/delete decision as a group.

6. Clips instead of whole works.

Clips take time to make, and many users don't know how to make them.  They are by nature incomplete, which is unsatisfying.  Also, if nobody ever posts the whole movie, nobody will be able to make clips from it!

Asking users to clip out the sexy parts of interesting movies is asking them to do work.  People are lazy, and don't like to work.  It's easier to post the whole thing, unaltered.  Also, I prefer whole movies.  I'm not the only one.

7. We should be getting movies from other torrent sites.

and

8 ) The site owner doesn't want more torrents.

I don't believe I've ever interacted with the GTRU site owner(s), but I have worked with lots of corporate site owners.  They want:

More and better content,
  which attracts more users,
    which creates more traffic,
       which leads to more revenue (via donations, subscriptions, or advertisements)

My proposals would increase the amount of interesting content in four ways:

1. Rare and/or obscure and/or non-English language films with that are significant to the gay community will be much less likely to be deleted, so more users will be able to find them.

2. Users who like straight porn, and want to see more straight porn with better lighting and longer scripts (i.e. themed movies with unsimulated straight sex) will be able to find more of that content under Straight Younger and Straight Older.  Because these movies will not be in the Themed Movie category, the traditional Themed Movie users will not be bothered.

3. Users who want to see hot naked guys on screen will be able to find more content under the Voyeur category.  Because these movies will not be in the Themed Movie category, the traditional Themed Movie users will not be bothered.  (Voyeur is from voir, "to see".  It seems to be the perfect category for watching hot naked guys.  But if that isn't acceptable, these could go under "Softcore" instead.  That category is rarely used.)

4. Users who want to see more classic films that relate to the history of fabulousness (i.e. drag) will be able to find more torrents of this type.  These will be posted in Themed Movies, and I don't think most of the traditional Themed Movie users will be bothered by this either… but if they are, they'll have a place to comment and complain!

Because this site is indexed in google, the site owner(s) can expect more new memberships, as people search for a copy of a rare movie they want to see, and find that it's available only here.  That's how I found this site, through a google search for a rare title.

Does Call me by your name and moonlight count? I mean for gay themed movies, since that's the entire theme of each of the films.

Yes, any movie with an LGBT main character is allowed, and both of those have been posted many times.

The "gay main character" is our trump card – whenever someone questions whether a movie is gay enough, if there is a gay main character, we can keep it from being deleted.  But the gray areas are numerous:

1. What is a main character?  How much screen time separates a major character from a moderately important character?  What are the agreed-upon methods for distinguishing the two?

2. What is LGBT?  Do closeted gays count as LGBT?  What if they are in denial and won't admit that they are gay to themselves?  What if the movie constantly suggests that they are gay, but never affirms it?

3. How much LGBT-oriented writing is required to meet the rules?  What if the character is openly LGBT but that has nothing to do with the plot development?

4. How do we deal with movies that arguably have gay main characters, but were made before openly gay characters were allowed?

That last one is particularly difficult because it requires the most cultural competence -- in this case, knowedge of the way that specific societies have treated their LGBT members over time.  We are sure that the master-at-arms in Billy Budd is a closeted/repressed gay, because he is portrayed in ways that were used, at the time of the portrayal, to indicate queerness without being explicit.  This is true of both the book and the film.

But I would have NO WAY of knowing what subtle clues and culture-specific hints would tell me that a Bangladeshi character was a closeted/repressed gay in a movie from '60s Bangladesh.  I just don't know what to look for.  We all have blind spots.

However i am certain that there are Bangladeshi GTRU members who would know EXACTLY what to look for to determine if the filmmaker wanted us to assume that a character in an old code-compliant movie was actually gay.  So if someone posts a '60s Bangladeshi movie with possible/questionable gay content, we should invite culturally competent GTRU members to comment, and learn from them.

If there are gray areas in any movie or show, we should socialize the decision, and invite people who really understand the subtle hints, the links to culture heroes and archetypes, the obscure idioms, the historical references, all the background information that you can only learn if you grow up in a culture.

That's all I'm asking for -- a second opinion, a third opinion, as many opinions as qualified members of this site care to contribute!

@cinemacapman, I completely agree with you, but remember all the arguments over Billy Budd?  Just describing the gay content when you post isn't good enough for obsessive rules-followers, and our rules aren't written clearly enough for anyone to agree on what they mean, so it's an endless headache.  Any time we write rules that incorporate newly-created compound words that have no agreed-upon definition, we're asking for headaches!

Basic proposal:

0. The mods can still immediately delete anything that obviously doesn't belong here.

1. When someone posts a movie or show that may not be gay enough, create a forum topic with the title and release year.

2. Put in that torrent's comments: "We're not sure this is LGBT enough to belong here, but we'd like your opinion, especially if you speak the language and grew up in the country of origin for this work.  If you think this should be kept, or removed, share your opinion here: <forum link="">"

3. Give it a week.  What's the rush?  If it disappears because of DMCA in the meantime... problem solved!

4. Look at the opinions.  Give extra weight to the opinions from people with matching cultural competencies.  If they think it's gay enough, it should stay.  Otherwise, go with the majority opinion.

This won't require any new coding or development... but if Joker was willing to spend some time on it, numbers 1 and 2 could be automated, so moderators could create the forum topic and add the comment with a single click.

Moderators save time, users have more ownership of the site's contents, everybody understands exactly why something was kept or deleted, and that forum-based decision can be used over and over, every time someone posts another copy of that title.  The advantages are numerous.  Am I missing something here?  Doesn't that seem like a reasonable way to make difficult decisions about gray areas in the rules?

Yes, I would prefer to rewrite the rules for movies and shows, but that is never going to happen.</forum>

"Culturally competent" is not an insult.  It is a fact, for all of us.  I am not Asian, I did not grow up in Asia, I do not pretend to be culturally competent to judge Asian movies, even when I understand some of the language.  I am also not culturally competent to judge movies made in Africa, for instance.

"Cultural competence" is a common concept in anthropology and sociology.  It is not an insult, it is an admission that we all have limitations, and others have experiences and knowledge that we cannot acquire ourselves.

The discussion on this post is EXACTLY what we want to encourage, for every movie that is in a grey area.

Instead of moderators making their own decision, which has random results, we will discuss the movie in these forums, and many can comment, and we'll get a much more fair, equitable, and consistent decision on whether it's gay enough to stay here.  A secret forum that is only viewable by moderators isn't good enough.

If a movie is obviously out of theme, then it can be deleted immediately.  If it is questionable, let us all discuss it (that's what "socialize" means – make the decision as a group, rather than as an individual.)

Whatever the decision, the link to the discussion can be reused many times, whenever someone uploads the same film in different formats.

This is the core problem:

There are 2 Mods for Themed and TV, myself and Kalayan, but mostly I'm the one doing Themed torrent moderation because Kalayan have other jobs as moderator. ... sometimes I just don't have time.

That's why we have different mods that came from around the world and from different languages. We may still have small group of people but its enough.

Those two statements cannot both be true.  If only one person is judging the Themed Movies category, then there are no people from around the world making these decisions!  C'mon folks, let's be rational.

The final decision can be made by a moderator, but only after the users have their say.

And of course this is a democracy!  Torrents are alive or dead because people choose to seed them.  Torrents are posted because people choose to share them.  There is nothing autocratic about this site, except that one moderator has total control over which gray-area postings are kept and deleted.  That's why we're getting random results.

How would I rewrite the rules?  They are so poorly written that in their present form, they can't be rescued.  Remember, this site explicitly forbids posting anything that is interesting to gays.  Until someone provides a real OED definition for "gay-interest", we have to assume it means what it says – anything interesting to gays.  This is a very strange rule for a site named gaytorrent!

So how about: Themed Movies are only allowed if a majority of GTRU users agree that they are gay enough to belong here.  In films where the homosexual content is obscured because of age, code compliance, or authorial intent, the opinion of users who grew up in the culture that produced the film should be given extra weight, because they can detect subtle references to homosexuality that will be missed by users and moderators who are not familiar with that culture.

@2222 – wouldn't your job be a lot easier if you didn't have to make any decisions about Themed Movies, because the users were making them for you, in their own spare time?  Wouldn't that save you a lot of work?  Wouldn't it be nice to say that every decision you make has the support of the majority of GTRU users?

The power for trusted moderators to delete should stay alive for a variety of reasons

I agree 100%.

DMCA, possibly underage, obviously doesn't belong here (like when someone posted the latest AVENGERS).  These should all be deleted immediately by trusted moderators.

My proposals are more about the Themed Movie and TV / Episodes postings that are in a gray area – definitely gay-related, definitely of interest to some GTRU users, but maybe or maybe not compliant with the poorly-written and super confusing ESL rules for these categories.

Let everyone have a vote.

Last year, when it first came out, SYNONYMES was posted about a dozen times and then deleted (because of "NO THEMED", not because of DMCA or duplication).  Some of the more recent uploads were not deleted, including a 45GB Bluray that was never fully seeded.  I don't know why.  This demonstrates the random nature of the moderator's decisions.  It would be nice if we had some consistency.

If we had a democratic and culturally competent forum for making these decisions, we would all know why these movies were kept or deleted.

We're having a lot of problems with gay-related torrents posted to Themed Movies and TV/Episodes being deleted at random, for no good reason.

Moderators often do not understand the language and culture of the original film, and therefore are not culturally competent to make decisions about the level of gayness, especially when the film is older and adheres to ancient "wink wink" production codes, or has closeted characters, or makes frequent references to repressed homosexuality, etc.

Different moderators make totally different decisions.  A movie that is allowed by one moderator is deleted by the next.  The rules for posting Themed Movies and TV / Episodes are poorly written in ESL, and they are hard to interpret.  The rules also explicitly forbid "gay-interest", which is not a real word.  Nobody knows what it means.  Do we really want to forbid everything that is interesting to gays on a site named "gaytorrents"?

As a result of this confusion, what gets deleted and what is allowed to stay is completely random.

I completely understand that there are very few moderators and they are very, very busy.  They are donating lots of time and effort.  We appreciate their hard work!  Everyone on this site appreciates the hard work that moderators do!!!  But it's not unreasonable to ask that the rules be clearly written, understandable, and equitably applied.  The totally random nature of deletions is proof that nobody understands the rules, or agrees on what they mean.

I propose a change that would allow real GTRU users to determine "is it gay enough?":

1) If a moderator thinks a movie isn't gay enough, they create a forum post, put a link in the torrent comments, and ask people to comment in the forums.  This forum post can be reused to explain the democratic decision of the users, every time the same movie is posted in different formats.

2) If users with matching cultural competency think it is gay enough, then it won't be removed.  Cultural competency means they speak the original language of the film and grew up in the area where the film was made.  These are the only people who really understand all the code-forbidden subtext, the closeted characters, the repressed desire…

In essence, we're asking Moderators to socialize the decision before removing torrents from Themed Movies and TV/Episodes categories.  That will allow many more GTRU users to participate in these discussions.  It will also provide an interesting and educational forum on the cultural meanings of gay-related films from all over the globe and from many different eras.  After we make this change, these deletions will much less random, and everyone will understand why they were deleted, which means they will be much more likely to agree with the decision.

To make our torrents more interesting to a wider variety of gays, I also propose three additional changes:

• Movies and shows that are interesting only because of naked hot men may be posted, in their entirety, under "Voyeur", but not Themed Movies / TV.  Lots of real GTRU users want to see these naked hot men.  Why would we delete torrents of naked hot men, from a site called "gaytorrents"?  SYNONYMES (2019) keeps getting deleted, despite the fact that it opens with an extended sequence of a hot Middle Eastern guy stroking his semi-erect cock in a shower.  That is legitimate Voyeur material and should not be deleted, to say nothing of the steamy, repressed homoerotic tension that pervades the film, but which is much less obvious to anyone who doesn't understand French.

• Movies and shows that have unsimulated straight sex (but no gay characters) may be posted, in their entirety, under "Straight Younger" or "Straight Older", but not Themed Movies / TV.  These movies are basically straight porn with a fancy script and better production values.  We allow straight porn here, when properly categorized.  These films should not be deleted.

• Movies and shows that are essential to the history of drag are also allowed.  This would include classics with Judy Garland, Peggy Lee, Doris Day, etc.  There are not many of these, and they are beloved of drag queens all the world over.  We should not delete drag classics from a site named "gaytorrents"!

Please reply and vote on each change that I've proposed!  If the majority of GTRU users think I am a useless idiot, I will shut up and go away  

PS – I've noticed that East- and Southeast-Asian films with subtle homoeroticism, repressed/non-explicit gay characters, or concealed/closeted characters are never deleted from this site, despite being against the letter of the rules.  I suspect that one of the moderators has excellent cultural competency in East and SE Asia, so they understand the subtle clues that tell the audience that this character or situation is gay, despite the obfuscations introduced by directors, censors, and code standards.  I respect and appreciate this moderator's subtle understanding of locally-produced films.  All I am asking for is the same consideration for non-Asian films.

Thank you for your thoughts!  Torrent trackers are both supremely democratic, and uniquely individualistic.  This site's users are what make it an awesome place.  Without you, this site would be nothing.  So please demand a vote on every decision.

Still loving the extended view, especially now that it's customizable.  You've made tremendous improvements to the site!  It's OK if you need to take a few days off.  Enjoy the weekend! 

Inside an individual torrent's page, can you change it so that clicking on [File list] shows both the original size in bytes and the truncated base-10 size in KB/MB/GB, like you did with the mouseover view on the search page?  (BTW thanks again for adding the exact size, it's so much easier for me to search for duplicates now.)

Still curious if you can change torrents that include .scr files so that they show up outlined in RED instead of looking like normal torrents?

Finally, I was happy when you added the Search link back to the main menu bar.  Any chance we can get it back?  If you need room, replace the "GAYtorrent.ru" image with simple text "GTRU" in the same font as Torrents and Forum.  GTRU is how most of us refer to the site, anyway… and the slightly-askew 3D view big-block text with its metallic shading and odd lighting is definitely part of the 2006 design  ;D

Muchas gracias, vielen danke, arigatou gozaimasu!!!

Now take a few days off!!!

@ben351500 - I also have been accidentally scrolling the picture/description box, instead of the whole page.  I've started to get used to moving the mouse to the right edge of the page before scrolling, which fixes that problem.

I really like the new extended view with the large fonts and full descriptions.  Completely understand that the scrolling boxes won't work for everyone, perhaps we will have individual options to turn them on or off…

Thanks, Joker!  The site is much better now.

One tiny thing, that might help a lot of people: we have been getting a lot of malware uploaded as .scr files.  Would it be possible to color torrents that include .scr files with dark red, and add a "PROBABLE MALWARE" to the torrent title?

I just tried the new Search page again.

All I can say is… wow!  Just wow.

You fixed all the problems and now I like it much better than the older version.

Thanks a million!  Just adding the exact file size to the description, and getting rid of the page title change for new messages, makes this site much more usable.  But you've done so much more than that.  Very impressive!  Thanks again!!!

:cheers:

Since my last post was all complaints, let me apologize, and try to offer positive suggestions.

I mostly use this site by opening the Search page, then opening additional previous Search pages in tabs, until I reach the last time I looked through the results.

I then look at the torrents, in the order that they were uploaded.  I read the titles, and if they are interesting (or difficult to understand) I read the description by mousing over the … (ellipses) and look at the images by mousing over the title.  If the pictures appear in some random place with 50% cut off, I usually click on the camera icon to see them better.  After all this, if the torrent looks good, I open it in a new tab and move on to look at the next most recent torrent description.

Not everybody uses the site this way, but many of us do.  That's why there were so many complaints last time the site tried to require Captcha after every five page loads -- it broke tabbed browsing.

There are a few things that would make this easier, faster, and more efficient:

1. If more of the torrent title was included before being cut off and replaced with ellipses.  There is a BIG difference between torrents that end with 480P and torrents that end with 1080P, but this often gets cut off.  There is no reason to truncate the torrent title.  Simply wrap to a second line, if necessary.

2. The torrent title and description should be in readable fonts with high contrast to background.

3. If more of the description was shown without having to mouse over the ellipses, that would be helpful.  When we do mouse over, we should see as much of the description as will fit on the screen.  It doesn't matter if it takes up most of the screen, because it will disappear when we mouse away.

4. When we mouse over the torrent title, the pictures should be shown in as large a box as possible.  As above, it's OK if the pictures are so large they cover most of the screen, because they will disappear when we mouse away.

5. The "gtru :: 1 Message" notification in the page title MUST GO AWAY.  Because the site alters and obscures ALL of the tabbed page titles every time some !@#$-%^&* sends yet another reseed request, it makes it impossible to find the tab you were looking for... unless you open your Inbox and then wait minutes for all the stupid warnings to disappear.

Finally, when we click on "File List" we should see the EXACT FILE SIZE in BYTES.  That is the precise size of the file, with no conversion or truncation -- exactly as it is shown in the torrent file itself.  Converting to base 10, then truncating and adding KB/MB/GB makes it IMPOSSIBLE to detect duplicates based on file size.  I can still do it if there is only one file in the torrent -- the main page shows the exact size in bytes (THANK YOU!!!) but if it has two or more files, I can't see the exact sizes of the individual files unless I download the torrent.

If the UI redesign effort was to make it easier for mobile phone users, why not just allow users to choose the interface based on how they access it?  Most of this site's users don't access it via phones.  The screens are too small, and the keyboards suck.

The new design is inefficient to use and difficult to read.

Instead of clicking on one thing to see the Search page, I have to click on a menu then click on another.  Same with messages – I get 10 reseed requests per hour and multiple clicks to clear the stupid pop-up warning message make this much more inconvenient than it already is.  In general, everything that used to take one click now takes two clicks.  it really adds up.

On the search page, when I mouse over a title, the images appear, but they are confined to a very small box, so I only see two or three images even if the torrent description has dozens.  Also, the text is tiny.  I understand how to use the browser zoom function, but every other site I use has readable text, without needing to zoom.

I turned off the new page as soon as I had tried it for a few minutes and realized it was basically unusable for the way I browse this site.  A few minutes ago, it turned itself back on.  This is really poor UI design.  I chose the older interface because it is much more efficient and easier to use.  Please do not automatically revert me.

If you really want to improve the site, turn off the reseed button for any torrent that has at least four seeders, then offer 2x upload bonuses for the last two seeders of a torrent.  That would tremendously improve retention.  We have torrents that die after just a few weeks, despite being snatched by dozens of people.  This torrent site has the worst retention of any I've used.  Plab has fixed this problem by offering bonuses for the last seeders, so people are motivated not to delete torrents from their clients if there are just one or two seeders.

I appreciate the effort, but UI is not this site's problem.  Poor torrent retention, overly rapid deletion of popular torrents, and overly slow deletion of torrents containing malware are all much, much more serious problems.

Some very popular sites have interfaces that look like they were designed twenty years ago.  The older UI is not a problem.

Hello fellow users, I sent this to the Helpdesk earlier, and wanted to post it here too, in case any of you can help us find Storm's current facebook page or other reliable information, to finally prove he was at least 18 in 2013.

–-
Hello mods, I noticed someone reposted a torrent from 2014 with Storm Lefron videos.  When I opened the page, it was marked "UNDERAGE" and I got an access denied message.

I know users get in trouble for posting underage content, so I want to let you know that "Storm Lefron" aka "baseball dude" aka "imyoboy" aka "Luke Miconi" was NOT underage when he posted his vids to imyoboy.blogspot.com.  Please do not punish the uploader for posting this torrent.  It's legal.

Storm posted a few dozen videos and photos in 2013.  When his family found out, he deleted the blog.  When his videos started showing up everywhere else (pornhub, xvideos, tumblr, etc.) he started sending messages asking them to be deleted.  In the beginning, his messages said "these videos are my property and were stolen from me, and you are destroying my life by posting them".  When that didn't work, he started saying he was underage when he made them.  He never claimed to be underage until he wanted to get his videos deleted.  You can find some of these messages if you google "storm lefron" then look at Google's cached tumblr pages.

He lied about being underage to get his videos deleted.  And it worked -- you can't find them anywhere anymore, even on GTRU.

There are other facts that show he lied, and that he was at least 18 when he posted his videos:

1. If he distributed sexual videos of a minor, he would have been prosecuted for child porn.  He was never prosecuted, and has never even mentioned the possibility.  For the last 20 years, US prosecutors have been regularly prosecuting underage people who distribute videos of themselves.  They don't mess around.

2. His twitter feed doesn't give his current age, but his Facebook page did, and according to that, he would have been 19 in 2013.  (I can't find his facebook page now, I saw it several years ago.)

3. Apparently he's not upset about people seeing his videos anymore, because on his Twitter feed (@jacobssoup) he gives people advice on how to find them!  He never says anything about being underage.  He's no longer trying to maintain the lie.  See https://twitter.com/jacobssoup/with_replies

4. He didn't look anywhere near 16.  He had the muscular build of a college athlete.

I'm going to post this message to the Forums as well, maybe somebody will know how to find his Facebook page and we can get his real age.

Bottom line, this torrent is LEGAL: https://www.gaytorrent.ru/details.php?id=b1c943b66c80f19be36d8b0cc7c850210b3d51db8f95ac96

Even if you can't restore the torrent, please do not punish the uploader, they did nothing wrong.  If you can restore the torrent, please add a staff comment so that GTRU users know he was at least 18 when he made the vids.

It upsets me that he lied because he makes us all seem like perverts.  We did nothing wrong.  He was an adult and should have acted like one, not tried to get other people into trouble!

PS – as a humorous aside, his Twitter feed is nothing but gay porn clips.  So I guess he was also lying about being straight!  I don't know many straight people who post nothing but gay porn on their Twitter feeds!

Thanks guys!  Maybe we can finally and definitively prove that he was legal, so we can again enjoy his massive, perfectly-shaped, well-muscled ass without any guilt or fear!!!  (Must be jelly 'cause JAM DON'T SHAKE!!!)