Building a Community

The heart of a good BitTorrent site is a good community. This is a hard subject to address, which is one reason I've hitherto avoided it. However, it's also a very important one, so I'll do my best.

Easier than describing how to make a good community is perhaps how not to do so. I know of a group of people that are trying to create a community out of whole cloth, which strikes me as ridiculously naïve. That said, they're more knowledgeable than I am, and if they succeed, the more power to them.

However, in my experience, good communities are things that are not made but simply come about of their own accord. The best you can do as administrator is to focus on creating an environment that fosters a strong community. I've already outlined factors that can poison a community: strong emphasis on ratio, paranoid pre-emptive action against potential undesirables, heavy-handed and arbitrary moderation, and so forth.

People like to be free, to be able to speak their minds without fear of repercussions. They will naturally gravitate to a place where they feel that they can do this. Make no mistake, the world doesn't need another 4chan. In fact, the world doesn't need the 4chan it already has. As always, it is necessary to find a balance between the extremes of staff control and utter chaos – to moderate in moderation, as it were. Trying to entice people become active in the community is doomed to failure. Rewards for high post counts are ridiculous; people are too hung up over post counts anyway, and it's harder to break in to a community where post count equals status equals worth as a person. It may not seem that way to you, but it will to the newcomers.

This is where things get difficult. It's up to you to find your own balance. All I can do is lay out the questions and leave you to answer.

If you've got any more points you'd like us to cover before shutting this bad boy down, now's the time. Don't be shy!

Donations

In light of yesterday's post, I'm going to spend the next few days addressing questions as they come up. Today's question is regarding encouraging donations.

In my experience, people are generally pretty decent sorts and will do what they can to support their favorite site, and I'm assuming that's you. I'm not into pushy salesmanship, and I don't think it's necessary. It is annoying and compromises the tone of your site, but more importantly, it crosses a rather important legal line between facilitating the sharing of copyrighted material and outright selling it. Where you want to stand on that question is entirely your own choice, but I like to stay on the light side.

However, I'm not opposed to the idea of buying ratio, as long as your site doesn't make it necessary for users to do so. Ratio represents a contribution to the site, and there are all kinds of ways to contribute. Some sites also provide ratio bonuses for long-term seeders, and I think there is very much the same thing going on here. If you've contributed, I have no problem with recognizing you for it.

I have a slightly less sunny image of donor/ratio perks, though. Any features that you provide to VIPs are features that you are denying to other users, which in turn prevents your site from being as usable as possible to as many people as possible - kinda the point in my view. Providing recognition is fantastic, but adding concrete features is a little more questionable. VIP-only forum boards will fracture your community, since the VIPs will tend to hang out with their kin and other users will never really be pulled into the fold.

In terms of recognition, I suggest simply giving users more control over their own profiles and the way they are presented to others. I know some sites allow avatars only to power users. However, since I only ever notice peoples' avatars rather than their usernames, I want to encourage as many people to have avatars as possible. You could allow people to customize the way their username is displayed, add more info to their profiles, maybe add custom stylesheets. None of these things have any practical use, but they provide a degree of social status as a reward, and that is enough. Of course, the ubiquitous donor star is a must.

I suggest placing a clear donate button on every page, but nowhere obtrusive. In keeping with my previous point regarding selling copyrighted material, I would keep it away from torrent description pages. Make it clear to your users that donations are always appreciated but never expected. A simple button in the header or footer ought to be plenty. I like Demonoid's approach of using an animated GIF that flashes briefly and subtly every couple of seconds. It draws attention without being too distracting.

Demonoid also has a neat donation system. I'm not sure I should be detailing it here, but you should be able to get some idea by making a donation yourself, or going through the process up to the point where you're asked to key in your PayPal account. Basically, donated money is received not through Demonoid but through a third party site, so PayPal can have no complaint. Very clever.

The Rules: Writing a Constitution

Yesterday I walked into a shop and was greeted by a sign thanking me for not urinating in the produce. Wait, no I wasn't. You know why? Because there are certain codes of behavior that are implicitly expected of all members of a society. Yet somehow sites feel the need to inform me that I could be banned if I start stirring up hell in the forum. Great, thanks for that.

Quite simply, there are some things that just don't need saying. Sure, you're going to get trolls in your forum, but making a rule telling them to go away is going to do nothing for you. Rules are for the people that genuinely care about their standing with the site. The people that are just around to make trouble aren't going to be reading your rules, and certainly won't make a point of abiding by them. You can't legislate common sense.

So what are your rules for? They're for people like me. I'm a member of a bunch of different trackers, and whenever I sign up, I always take a peek at the rules before I get down to business. I know what a BitTorrent tracker is, I know the usual etiquette, but I just want to find out if there's anything special about how your site does business. Do I have to post in rhyme? Have a cute, fuzzy avatar? Download only certain torrents? I don't want to dig through a bunch of bullshit about obeying "the moderators [sic] expressed wishes! [sic]" in order to find out what really matters.

Conversely, a lot of sites that have automatic ratio bans (which I've ranted about in previous posts) won't detail these bans in their rules. The hardest and fastest (and most variable) rule of all is somehow overlooked. The staff don't have to touch it as the banbot does all the work, but it's the rule with the most impact on new users, good and bad alike. Whether or not I agree with the concept is a moot point, at least tell me.

You're writing a constitution here, not a criminal code. If you've never read your country's constitution, go do it. It's probably available online. In general, they're pretty succinct and accessible for all their importance, and you'd be surprised what rights are being violated. Your criminal code, by contrast, is probably a few thousand pages long. The constitution is basically a vague statement of purpose, while a criminal code gets into the nitty gritties. Since your moderators are not police officers bound by the letter of the law, you don't need a criminal code. You simply need to give guidelines by which your site should operate.

A lot of sites have 15-20 rules, mostly the stuff that came preset with TBdev or whatever they're using. In my mind, you should be able to get everything you need in less than 10, preferably 5 general rules and 5 upload rules, in addition to the behavior that one normally expects of a generic good member elsewhere on the internet. The fewer rules you have, the better.

That's not to say you should have people responding to your moderation actions complaining that they didn't know something was against the rules. If it's the sort of rule a person can't be normally expected to know, then by all means throw it in there. Otherwise, forget about it. You're entrusting your moderators with plenty of discretionary powers, so you don't need to spell everything out.

I'd finish up with some examples from TorrentFries, but quite simply, it's stuff that applies only to that site and to none other. That's kinda the point.

BitTorrent Communities

I didn't want to bore you with too much Linux, so today I'll write about the elements of a BitTorrent community from the eyes of a member of a handful and an admin of one. I would encourage anyone that still reads our posts to comment with any questions you might have, and we will try to address everything we can.

When analyzing BitTorrent communities from an admin perspective, I often consider the following goals.

1. Maximize uploaded material quantity
   
2. Maximize upload quality
3. Maximize user involvement

This three-legged stool seems to have a visible balance. In the case of large tracker sites, often there is more quantity paired with less quality and user involvement. Smaller private sites sometimes have higher levels of quality and user involvement, but sometimes less quantity. These three legs on my stool help each other. For instance, more user involvement helps upload quality and quantity. Good upload qualities and quantities attract user involvement. When creating a community, it's critical to have a clear idea of your goals for these three items and let that define the 'feel' of your site.

Maintaining higher standards on torrent descriptions coupled with user comments improves at least perceived quality. When users have a way to gauge the details of the torrent data without downloading, they'll be more comfortable engaging. Have an explicit example of how torrent descriptions should look on the user upload page. Instead of simply titling your comments section "Comments" on the torrent page, consider something like "Comment on this torrent's quality".

When users aren't downloading or uploading material, what are they doing? Many sites consume users' excess time through interactive forums and shoutboxes. A lively forum can be the mainstay of a community. Conversely, a dead or hostile forum can turn away would-be outstanding members away. Be friendly and don't let users or moderators become short with users even if they are n00bs, the whole community will align on the staff and prominent posters' viewable culture.

User interface is key. Make it easy for users to drill down the material they're looking for using categories and subgroups. Search is the most important thing for a torrent site, so make sure it is prominently positioned, works well, and is predictable and consistent. Otherwise, negative results are a reflection on the material tracked. Also, I can't stress the importance of a good site design. Mediocrity won't get you very far when attempting to gain users and material early on.

As mentioned before, ratio tracking helps to mentally encourage users to give back to the community. Distinguish uploaders and otherwise exceptional members in the community or figure out a way to give them a warm fuzzy feeling. Make this visible wherever users interact.

The overlying theme is culture. Define a culture you find appealing and align your entire site around it. Culture exudes itself in every aspect of your site from the site rules to each forum post, so take some time to think about what you want to display. A little psychology and management will go a long way.