Effective immediately (actually, 36 hours ago) the Mind-Warp PaVilion tracker is public. This means that visitors are no longer required to register for an account to download torrents and SRE has been suspended for the membership. This new policy has already encouraged more people to download from the tracker, and is giving our members opportunity to upload and improve on their ratio.

I am sure you are asking, "if SRE is gone, why worry about ratio or even keep an active account?"

Simple. There is no guarantee that this is a permanent policy. If the server becomes crushed, or we are faced with too many people who leech and run, we will have no choice but to switch back to a "member's only" tracker with SRE. Members who take advantage of this period and increase their ratio should be in good shape if this happens. Assuming this works well, and keeping consistent with an ongoing policy of rewarding participation, there will be regularly scheduled "Members Only" torrents and perhaps a waiting period built on a member's credits and share ratios. It is in every member's best interest to remain active in uploading and to build as high of a ratio as possible.

So use this time productively. See if you can help out your fellow peers, but also take some time and revisit some of those old torrents you may have passed up due to ratio concerns. Remember, by downloading them you will be giving other members the opportunity to raise their ratios -- and that is a good thing.

And to our many, many guests... Enjoy!

A huge percentage of the membership don't post, but simply download, so it really makes no difference. As it is, this is a chance for people to sample the site and see it they like what is on offer. If they do, then maybe they would be inclined to actually join. Also if this is a limited time thing, it gives members a good chance to up their ratio as a lot more people will be downloading the torrents. If (when) the tracker goes private again, people who have visited and liked what they got, will probably join to continue having access to the torrents. It is a good way of getting more people involved. If it stays public full time, it is still good, as people can be put off joining somewhere where you HAVE to register first, as there are people who are wary of registering.

At the end of the day it is all about sharing, beit torrents or knowledge or just a funny story. We need to shout about this place, the more the merrier (as long as it doesn't get engulfed and brings the place down, but then Bewley just has to go private again then).

I don't see it as you do, even if of course I understand why you may.
If you seed, and share, and participate, it'll all come back to you, not only in terms of share ratio or other rewards (like, as bewley pointed out, having "members only" torrents etc), but in terms of having a return in the enjoyment of the community that you help creating here, and in the knowledge that you are giving to others what you got and contributing to spread music.
I mean, your efforts are never wasted, and opening the torrent downloading to guests will not certainly diminish your efforts, not to the people that participate here.
And there is also a point in motivation. Uploading a torrent for the sake of doing it is much better than doing it just to improve share ratio...I mean, this would show a real spirit of participation.

So, as in everything, there are two ways to see it, I always tend to see tha glass as half full and not as half empty, and I'm sure that we should try to see the good side of this.
As Goblinking says, we are just watching how it works, it's extremely easy to stop any time and return to private.


I too have a life experience similar to yours, and I agree in part, especially in this world (and here bewley and the other mods are certainly no newbies, they know more than you and I that most of the leechers grab and go, with no feelings of gratitude), but then I have learned another thing in all these years, and that is that I don't care for other people's selfishness. Too bad for them, they lose part of the enjoyment.
Same here, let them grab and go, they will lose all the fun we have in here;
(of course if too many leech and run the whole thing would have to change, but this was said already in the first post by bewley)

And also, who would want a bunch of people uploading or posting anything just to keep their ratio high? The spirit here for me is the opposite, to try to have an interesting forum where one can learn something useful or simply have fun, and an interesting tracker (and gallery  ) so no forced participation, it would ruin the atmosphere that is created by a motivated membership.
With this I'm not saying that keeping a good ratio is no big deal, of course a good SR should be encouraged, for it is a way of keeping a torrent system working and healthy, for it prods the membership and gives them a reward, but IMO it shouldn't be the only reason for contributing...so if SRE is off for some time, it shouldn't change anything to who wants to keep his SR high.

What I'm trying to say, and here I'll conclude, is that I think that the motivated member will post and seed no matter what the share ratio rules are, and a motivated membership will certainly be more helpful than a forced one in creating an interesting and lively site.
What's more, seeding is in their interest, for it keeps the whole system working, if noone seeds the whole thing collapses...and motivated membership knows this and doesn't want it to happen.
So...let 'em grab and run...that's my philosophy...some time ago, someone I admire added something else to this sentence, that gave it a complete sense, but I will leave it to your imagination 

Edit: I just thought of something else, and it's that what probably made this "opening" possible was the effort of people like you, who gave the system the chance to sustain itself with your participation in seeding and posting...without the knowledge that there will always be people willing to keep it rolling, probably the idea of an opening to guests wouldn't have grown (I'm only presuming this)...so to my opinion this reinforces my thought that none of your efforts were, and are, wasted.

I would like to thank everyone for their views on this they have made things a bit more clear I would like to make clear that my reply was worded in the way it was, not because I am ungrateful or do not enjoy seeding and giving back, Of course I do! I was merely putting views forward that some members might be thinking, and who were not feeling brave enough to put them forward in this thread. Also they were points that if I was honest I was wondering / concerned about as well.

Weesam ......with reference to my statement and is a bit of a smack in the face for all my hard work and effort in seeding here over the last few weeks of course it isn't hard work in the sense of shoveling a pile of shit from one part of the farm yard to the other. However there will be some members thinking hey! I'm a member of other sites that still have SRE, and as such I will / should have concentrated my bandwidth on those torrents I got from those sites rather than the ones I got from here, so I can improve my SRE where ever instead. You or I might not like it, but that is the way some people think, and if I'm honest, that thought crossed my mind fleetingly for a moment when I first read the anouncement. I personally will still seed and participate towards this site because I like it, and for the reasons you and others have pointed out in other replys here. Maybe using the term hard work wasn't the best analagy, but you get my point! People like me are prepared to put certain points forward whether we agree with those points or not. Points of all persuasions need to be put on the table, and discussed and answered.

It was brought to my attention today that our guests have been having difficulty downloading Strange Fascination due to the way the tracker handled "freebie" torrents.

This issue has been resolved and I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Yes, it was strange and had me wondering as well, until I checked e-mail and saw someone asking. Looks like we have bounced up to 9 downloaders in just the past ten minutes... I just hate that it was "broken"...

I suppose that is due more to professional pride than anything else.

The ratio enforcement has been turned off, but it is still in everyone's interest to keep the ratio as good as you can. So if you were to log out and download you would be doing yourself a disservice, because there could come a time in the future that the enforcement is reintroduced. The only downloads which don't cound towards your download ration is the 'free downloads' eg the LA 74 torrent that Bewley put up a couple of weeks ago, this was not going towards your download ratio, but did contribute to your upload ratio, so was a good chance for anyone to get their ratio up.

Perhaps nobody is waiting for my opinion, but anyway :
I miss, and perhaps its coincide, the uploads of non-administrators. I think one of the reasons is cancelling the share ratio. The share ratio is stimulating to look at your upload stats .....
A few months ago there were many people doing uploads....and helping eachother. For example : the phoenix dvd's. It felt like a smal community with the same intrest.
I think the "going public" has no influence on this matter. It's a good thing .... and what's the difference with making a membership? You give a username and a password -> that's all.....

Anybody has the same thoughts or am i talking  x%&± ?

Take care,

Marc