Time for torrent approval

cumeaternc

Ok 269091 here is the clear answer…

There is no set time for torrent approval because all Mods are volunteers on this tracker. Don't ask for a time frame because no mod "works" the same hours daily on the site. If torrent uploads becoming visible in a timely manner is important to you then get 10 torrent uploads right in a row and I(cumeaternc) will give you (269091) AA privileges. You have 8 clean ones in a row right now. Again there is now and will never be a "time frame" for a torrent upload to be approved so don't ask for one.

Popper

@269091:

… I really can't understand that you don't want to commit yourself. Then make the time long enough - 12 hrs - just a time the staff would say: Thats too long, thats not ok. But then users will have a guideline instead of hanging in the air and having to guess. ...

Because many times it just takes longer than we think ourselves it is OK. If we would give for example 48 hours to be on the secure side, it wouldn't help and just make new members afraid of uploading for the first time.

Personally I can not commit to fixed hours to work on torrent approval. If it gets there, I'll stop working on approval. (Remark: of the currently available torrents I've approved the third most). Perhaps it is where you want to push me.
Less I can commit on a duration. That will require a professional team (thus paid and no more a free place).

BTW: Qualified and motivated volunteers to the staff are welcome. There is an advertisement in the forum. It's old but still valid.

@269091:

… What bad could happen if the rules would e a bit clearer??? ...

Members will claim: I've uploaded 10 clean torrents, you must give me Auto Approval privilege. Members will upload 10 small clips (lets say in the 100 MB range) from one studio and then claim the privilege. It is where it will bring us. However such a upload history does not allow to evaluate if a member has understood the upload rules and will follow them on it's own initiative once the privilege is granted. (this is a little caricature to make the point)

269091

Dear Brandon and Uwe,

I guess I have understood that going on in this thread will not get anyone any further. From my side it was just a suggestion which I would consider an approvement based on my personal experience in here (probably I am one of the less intelligent users by being the only one running into these problems :)) - do with that suggestion as you like.

Many thanks for your opinions and best regards

Popper

Sorry to say, your sugguestion to indicate a time is not practicable with the current staffing.

It is a good proposal for a professional site which puts the necessary resources to assure a stable quality of service.

I repeat, you should never been given a time, which was the error leading you to create this topic.

269091

Sorry to say, your sugguestion to indicate a time is not practicable with the current staffing.

It is a good proposal for a professional site which puts the necessary resources to assure a stable quality of service.

I repeat, you should never been given a time, which was the error leading you to create this topic.

Excuse me very much - I have not planned to post anymore in here but I can't prevent myself from doing so again.
Because what you write is simply not true. I still consider it right that I have been given a time guideline - though I admit that the timeframe may have been a bit optimistic…

BUT

It was not just the time thingy - although the topic title says so - but more the feeling, that I repeatedly ran into problems and made mistakes due to the fact that important information is not present or not acessable enough easily.

This is still my opinion and this was the main goal of this thread. I made a suggestion to improve this (regardess if you name a time for approval or not - that was just a detail in my suggestion and NOT my main goal) and you made me understand that you don't share my opinion and don't this consider improvement necessary.

On the other hand I still do consider it necessary and don't share your opinion.

So this is the point where it gets pointless to discuss any further - that was what I meant with my last posting.

Thanks again and best regards - and this will be my last posting in this topic - I promise. More would be a waste of your and my time.

blackdid

Hi all,
Interesting topic, good questions and answers
"269091" joined on July 30th and I joined next day, on July 31th so we're still newbies (until when lol)

But with Mod's and Admin's answers in Forum or PM, I guess most of the questions I had were solved.
Now concerning the torrent approval time, yes it varies a lot (especially if you upload during day time or night time, as I usually do).

Last example yesterday night : QTM 1.3 uploaded my torrent and redownloaded it automatically in Utorrent at exactly 23h24pm
And it has been approved at 5h18am this morning.
I felt it would take some time before approval (because of the hours display concerning the last approved torrents yesterday evening, as showed in the Search screen : 19h51 - 21h51 - 21h55… then nothing else was approved when I checked at 23h24, so maybe night mod was busy or resting at night time, and i respect that) . Next approved night torrents were done at 2h15, then 4h41 , finally a whole bunch (9 torrents) were approved during 4h59 and 5h25, including mine at 5h18 (time for torrent approval is no more an issue for me, because I knew my torrent was well prepared and mod may be busy. Also there are many other things you can do on the computer meanwhile...or even sleep lol)

On the other hand, during day time, it happened to me a torrent was approved after a few minutes only and that was great too. The things I always do now while waiting for approval are :

Stop all other seedings (no more leeching these days, but if they were I'd stop all of them too, immediately)
Verify images have been uploaded correctly (clic on the link in the automatical GT response : it happened to me, once, that an image was "lost" in GT, so I deleted the torrent before approval and resent it, that's so easy to do with QTM 1.3 , and all 12 images were showing that time)
Verify Utorrent is seeding (the green arrow, not the red one !) and it shows me seeding at GT ("1" written in green in my GT uploading profile, and "0" in downloading) : all these steps are very simple to check.
What is a bit more complicated is to check, before, if it's not a duplicate, and several queries have to be done in the Search window to check the best I can before creating the torrent (and Mod's sure have same problem to detect duplicates : it takes time, that's why the Search engine could be more helpful to all of us, as we already discussed here with Mod's and Admin's : http://community.gaytor.rent/index.php?topic=1818.120 )
Helping Mod's to search faster if a torrent is a duplicate or not will make this annoying task less...annoying
Also Uwe already confirmed me that the pending torrents were approved using a "FIFO" method (first in, first out)

Brandon, I thought same as you concerning something you wrote in this topic : "...then keep an eye on the new torrents. If one becomes visible and available that was uploaded after your then by all means send us a PM to see what the hold up is..."

But aren't we both mistaken looking it that way ?
In my nightly example, you can see 2 torrents were approved at 2h15am - 4h41am, when I uploaded mine at 23h24pm
How can I know at what exact time those 2 torrents were uploaded by the users ?
I can't, because it isn't shown anywhere (only approval time is indicated in the search window results) and those users probably uploaded their torrents before I uploaded mine, i.e they both uploaded before 23h24 and their torrents were pending before I uploaded mine, do you see it that way too ?

The only place where is indicated the real uploading time is the "hidden" page indicated by the automatical GT response, the page where our torrent isn't yet public (waiting for approval), there we check if our images are all displayed and if comments are correct : only there it shows the exact upload date, but it's hidden to everybody else, and just after approval, the approval date replaces the real upload date...which will disappear forever.

Or not ?

Popper

@269091:

… I still consider it right that I have been given a time guideline - though I admit that the timeframe may have been a bit optimistic...

No it was wrong. See the already earlier given answers. It is just to variable. If you like something on the secure side, it will be much too long to be meaningful.

And the time which was given to you made you complaining. If it would have been 4 hours, you would have still complained.

@269091:

….
It was not just the time thingy - although the topic title says so - but more the feeling, that I repeatedly ran into problems and made mistakes due to the fact that important information is) not present or not acessable enough easily.
....

Then you gave the topic the wrong title !

Nevertheless it looks you did never take the time to read the first page when one clicks "Upload" completely and the big / bold pages it links to (forbidden content list and the Upload guide), before you said to have read and understand by going to upload.

So I doubt, if it would be presented like you suggest, you would have read all the items linked in your proposal either.
(Just my humble opinion).

Yes, we have some cleaning and housekeeping in work and we read and notice suggestions. Unfortunately again, the staffing does not allow to implement these in a reasonable time to make any announcements. We speak rather in time frames of years.

Our Test section for members of the Forum is open to work and draft an alternative upload guide or any other guides. Or if you think you have a good Guide, it can be posted in the Guides and Howto section of the forum and may even become a sticky topic.

It is not only Staff who can improve the information available here, but the howl community. Doesn't sound that more positive spirit than the previous answers.

Popper

… Brandon, I thought same as you concerning something you wrote in this topic : "...then keep an eye on the new torrents. If one becomes visible and available that was uploaded after your then by all means send us a PM to see what the hold up is..."

But aren't we both mistaken looking it that way ? ...

Looking at the torrents which appear in the list can indeed be very misleading, because the time given in "Added" is the time of approval. Not the time of upload to the approval queue. So from that, you can't deduct if it was before or after yours.

Even if you compare the torrent IDs (in the end of the URL of the description page), which are given in the order of starting the torrent description is misleading because of the Auto Approval privilege members' uploads which go directly to the list and don't queue for approval.

On the other hand, your example for seeing a series of torrents being approved one after the other is rather an indices that a moderator came available to work on approval.

blackdid

@Uwe:

…because of the Auto Approval privilege members' uploads which go directly to the list and don't queue for approval.

Thx Uwe for your explanations.
Wouldn't it be great to display a "green star" (it indicates "auto approval" in visible user's profiles) right to the uploader's name on each result line in the Search window, and this green star would appear even if a user profile is hidden ?

But as we already have yellow stars (donators) or red "A" (download disabled) right to some user's names, it would be too overcrowded there.

Hey, I got an idea : why not displaying the user's NAME in green (instead of white) if he's on "auto approval" ?
Well, don't know if this could be of any help for Mod's…except give more work to mgr ;D

Have a great week-end all of you
(Brandon, i wrote it my way "week-end" ... private joke)

Popper

Moderators see Auto approval names in a different colour and "anonymous" uploader user names in a different shape.
mgr made us that already, but not to standard members.

I think making Auto Approval uploads recognizable to all isn't a bad idea. To give you an idea, the 250 AA members have uploaded with that privilege about 40% of all the torrents available, means about 12000.

blackdid

@Uwe:

Moderators see Auto approval names in a different colour and "anonymous" uploader user names in a different shape.
mgr made us that already, but not to standard members.

:announce: I think mgr's way !

Well now I should ask it officially in the request thread : it would be great if this good functionality could be seen by standard members too.
Then, if a user waits for his approval during hours and notices meanwhile 10 new approvals…all in green "AA" color, he would know there's nobody working on torrent approval (more or less), this should soothe his pain...a little

Better than staying in his own depressed mood : "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" ;D

mgr

May be I'm allowed to throw in my 2 cents:

sorry if I beat an already dead horse: Sorry to say - but we can not give any time frame for approving uploaded torrents for various reasons

we can't establish a time table so that we have at least in that time-table covered a regular period each day (not speaking of seven days a week). We (the admins) ask a moderator to be present on the site for at least one hour each day, that would require at least 24 moderators only for torrent approval alone, but only if all those moderators live in different time zones around the world so that really 24 hours can be realized and, more important, if really all those moderators are available to do their work each and every day. I think that is an illusory aim
there are a lot of other parts of the site where our members expect also moderator presence like the forum, the help desk …
we are right now in vacation time (at least in Europe) - so that would make any time table not worth the paper it is written upon (rather the computer storage to save it) - not speaking about some things like illness, family (rather BF) issues (also gay people DO have family) although there are not only gay people in the staff - and becoming a father takes quite a lot of time away from you - and I even didn't talk about economic issues which make real life work much more stressful than it was ten years ago
given that most of our torrents (more than 70% against 12 % from moderators in the US, rest mostly from Asian moderators) are approved from mods in Europe (remember the different time zones!!!) it is not really easy to find a moderator (which does torrent approval) during daytime in the US - just another problem
we constantly search for new moderators and we are lucky to get an aspirant too once in a while - on the other hand that also takes away time from our existing staff because new mods have a learning phase too and moderator newbie questions are usually important and urgent.
…

But the most important reason (at least for me) is: When we give a time frame we have to adhere to that time frame. (I'm not going to promise something I can't do later on).

As to our rules: we always try to have only those rules which are important for our members. Asking for uploading rules: our upload guide was mentioned before - I guess there is no other place where you can find all rules for uploading and hints for easy torrent approval combined together than the 2nd part of that guide. (Sorry for the "fishing for compliments" in that last sentence). You can find some "draft" of that part also in the forum: http://community.gaytor.rent/index.php?topic=2202.msg7340#msg7340

@blackdid:

…
Well now I should ask it officially in the request thread : it would be great if this good functionality could be seen by standard members too.
Then, if a user waits for his approval during hours and notices meanwhile 10 new approvals...all in green "AA" color, he would know there's nobody working on torrent approval (more or less), this should soothe his pain...a little

Better than staying in his own depressed mood : "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" ;D

If you can give me a real good reason to show AA-users in a different color. That information is important for moderators, because they not only have to approve new uploaded torrents but also (and especially) to check torrents from AA users for possible mistakes, you'd be astonished (to avoid "scared") how many AA-uploaded torrents have mistakes (like duplicates). It was (and still is) intended to make work for those moderators who not only approve torrents but check torrents from AA-users a bit easier.

cumeaternc

I had to go to work so I could not continue the discussion this morning(EST). But while I was at work I figured out a perfect solution.

269091 why not present a new upload every night at 11pm EST. I will be sure to get on the tracker then to at least approve that torrent. You must do this every night so to not waste my time and effort for staying awake. If you miss one night of uploading then 5GB will be taken away from you seeded traffic. So 11pm every night and if it is not a duplicate I will have it approved by 11:30PM(EST). Any other uploads you present at any other time will be ignored. That way both of our time is not wasted…

Do you see how silly be shoehorned into a time frame is. If you still think we should provide a time frame then there you go. 11pm(EST) every night. Just for you now, not any other uploader. Any other uploader that needs a time frame can pm me so I can expect your upload at 11PM(EST)also. All uploads after 11PM by a user who has decided to go this route will be ignored...

Still want a time frame for torrents? It goes both ways Bro. ;D

@__blackdid__
My "end" is "weak" thinking of our inside joke…lol. We gotta do something about that.

Guest

I have only uploaded two torrents so far but I must say that I don't mind the wait. I know the moderators and admins have lives outside of this site and I'm just glad that they do commit the time they do to make this tracker so great.

Thanks guys!!!

blackdid

@mgr:

If you can give me a real good reason to show AA-users in a different color…

Hi mgr
lol no I can't, and as I already wrote in another topic : "In my opinion, users requests should never be the priority (except for a clear bug, not a user improvement request, and I write this even if I'm a user), compared to any staff request that could help them in their daily work (less time required to do this, or make this task easier etc…)"
So if the AA colored info is already accessible to Mod's and helps them, then it's ok with me.

But what I read and understand from all staff members (Uwe, Brandon, you mgr) is the difficult and long task that Mod's have when they check for dups, and you just wrote it yourself : "...you'd be astonished (to avoid "scared") how many AA-uploaded torrents have mistakes (like duplicates)"

That's why (imho) Uwe's suggestion (and I made the same suggestion without knowing he already suggested that) should be a priority, i.e searching by file size to find dups more easily, as discussed in another topic : it would definitely help all Mod's to approve torrents faster, because it will take them less time to detect dups and reject the torrent.

Just for info, I keep in one txt file the names and sizes of the movies I get, it's definitely not the best way to retrieve any kind of info, but it helped me a lot to avoid dups :

search if same name exist, if not :
search if same size exists

And yes, many times the size is exactly the same, it's the same movie with another name (many uploaders change the file name for well known reasons)

You told us Tom was not here to help you right now (hi Tom !) , and you already added that suggestion to your do-list's . Well if one day you wake up and wonder : "ok, what what can I program today to help my Mod's ?", well…just remember blackdid's insistence (hey...careful with that axe !) ;D

Mod's, I'm speaking on your behalf.
What a surrealistic situation...only found on GT :laugh:

PS: mgr, Opera browser upgraded automatically for me yesterday (last release 10.61 as you can see here in the left column under my name) . But why didn't it upgrade automatically for you, as it shows 10.60 under your name in the middle of this page (your post being written a couple of hours ago) ?
Oh...you don't accept automatical Opera updates, something has to be done, Mod's help pleaseeee :thx:

cumeaternc

I have talked to 269091 privately and he did bring up one thing that is worth mentioning here. If you need assistance please don't hesitate to PM a Mod. That's what we are here for.

When you do pm us be sure your question is not answered somewhere else already on the site.

If you feel you are being "bullied" by a mod via pm then please let another mod know so that we can address the situation.

Don't spam the mods with pm(i.e. don't send every mod the same pm at the same time or the same mod multiple pm's for the same issue before you get a response).

If you pm a mod about a torrent upload, don't expect an immediate response. Remember…first in is first out. ;D

Finally use the chat system on the site. There is almost always a mod(or admin) available to assist you in there.

If this thread has been read as a gang rape on 269091 it is not! As each issue has been addressed, a "new" one came up. If you get an answer to a question and it's not the answer you wanted, you can rest assured asking other unrelated questions will not change that first answer.

Spintendo

@mgr:

But the most important reason (at least for me) is: When we give a time frame we have to adhere to that time frame. (I'm not going to promise something I can't do later on).

This really is the most significant point; as one of the better known of the many long held "rules" of Western society, personally and professionally acting, has been to never make a promise you can't keep.

::)

MrMazda

From the few torrents that I have uploaded, I fail to see any issue with the process of approving torrents. Granted the approval times did vary, but the process seemed simple enough and I have no issue with any decision that was made. Explanations have always been sufficiently detailed and quite reasonable.

Netti

I don't know if there is a word to use that is under a Newbie (maybe a virginal newbie), but whatever it is, that's me.

I'm trying to learn the torrent lingo because I realize without knowing the lingo, reading rules, and posts, and searching without using these terms, is like reading a different language. Where I would search for "someone sharing my file" I should probably look for the word "seed".lol

Anyway…. My question is...

I've seen posted in the rules, and also in this topic the phrase..

DO NOT UPLOAD IF YOU ARE CURRENTLY SEEDING/LEECHING SOMETHING ELSE SEED ONE TORRENT AT A TIME.

I guess it is my uneducated understand that I was seeding the torrents that I created? When its said not to upload if you are seeding, do I stop the torrents I have uploaded and am seeding? Or am I totally misunderstanding this entire thing.

Totally unrelated...

I have to say I use many other torrent sites, but until I came here I was never able to get help in learning how to create my own torrent. I always got the answer "go read the forum directions".

I wanted to say a big thank you to the people that helped me create my very first torrent and answered all my (sometimes confusing) questions. Noughty has been so patient in answering my questions, or getting answers from other mods and relaying them to me, and for all of your help I am truly thankful.

geographer

Thank you Netti for the kind words, it is really much appreciated.

Now regarding your question. If you will open your profile page, you'll notice a line in yellow called "Allowed Torrents" and a number next to it. When it comes to the process of uploading torrents, this number shows how many active torrents (torrents seeding or/and downloading) you are allowed to have in order to get your uploaded torrent approved. And it is important to note that your uploaded torrent, which is considered also active, because it's seeding.

For example, if that number shows 1, you can have active only your uploaded torrent. The rest have to be stopped (stopped, and not paused or removed from the torrent client).

If you have more torrents ready for upload, you need to upload them one at a time. This means that you upload the first torrent, wait until it's successfully approved, continue seeding it until 3 people download it from you completely and join the seeding. And only after that you're ready to upload the next torrent. If you're allowed to have only 1 active torrent this means you'll have to shut down the previous upload to make room for the new one.

Also, when we talk about active torrents, we, or course, mean only the torrents from our site. But, when it comes to uploading, to assure a better uploading speed, it's better to stop all torrents you have in your client's list.

Hope this clears a bit your questions.