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Are there other bittorrent/p2p forums that's worthwhile? I know of TPS but have no idea how to get in. Another one is r/trackers which is active and accessible but you can't discuss much there. There's /ptg/ but you have to sort through heap of trollshit to get anything of value. Would love to join another forum like this one.
TPS recruits on some trackers, and has had invite applications in the past. Was very busy during the second half of these forums' golden era (2009~12), and subsequently hit very hard by the fact said era finished. Whether you expect talk or invites, get ready to be disappointed. In hindsight, many of those who participated only did so to request FTN and disappear afterwards.
IMT claims to be a cozy community for experienced torrenters; in practice, I am told activity levels are on par with TPS.
T-I technically still exists, but it's an abandoned spam cesspool, and only good for old info from archived threads. Before this, BTN and PTP used to recruit from there until deciding it was no longer a good idea. As the final nail on the coffin, the database was breached on 2013.
FST was the /r/trackers of its time, with less moderation and more drama, and an unrestricted invite section. Sadly all the filesharing areas are dead, people are only interested on off topic and NZBs now.
There are many "bad" forums which are very active, but focus mostly on trading and selling rather than talking. Even though such activities are almost universally disapproved of and tracker staff go out of their way to kill anyone associated with them on sight, these are highly successful due to 1. great SEO rankings (just search Google for "torrent invites"), 2. supply and demand. Oh, and I must say their review threads are excellent.
There's also something called TopTBDev which I've only seen mentioned a few times and know nearly nothing about, and foreign communities which you are likely already familiar with if you speak their language and will find of not much use otherwise.
And I think that's it for forums. Back in the day, there were lots of "community-oriented" (no trading, no selling) ones with more invites than people willing to take them. tR, I-Z, IC, Etiv.in are just a few names, we got new additions literally every month, and https://www.sb-innovation.de/showthread.php?t=2343 has a thorough list. But none exist anymore because there is no longer an audience for these things... everyone wants to get "safe" invites from recruitment threads in order to achieve the ultimate goal: downloading the files they're interested on.
/r/trackers has news and announcements cross-posted to it, making it a good way to keep up with "what's going on" in the torrenting world, plus the occasional interesting discussion sometimes. Other than that, it's the same questions like "good site for anime?" and "what are trackers?" with the same answers posted over and over again. Also, the fact you can delete your own submissions means entire threads and comment branches regularly vanish because whoever started them flipped out, but that problem is inherent to Reddit in general (same with zero-explanation downvotes). Be sure to let them know how much you miss What.cd and can't believe %d years have passed since its closure already, you'll fit right in.
/ptg/ indeed has a low SNR at times, but I can appreciate their no-nonsense approach. You've got to take the bad with the good. The imageboard layout is in my opinion poorly suited to multiple simultaneous conversations (bouncing around quoted posts :rolling_eyes:), but is simultaneously its biggest strength. I don't see /ptg/ working out as a forum, even with anonymous posting.
Ugh. I feel like a certain battleship now. See https://www.sb-innovation.de/showthread.php?t=32302 and https://www.sb-innovation.de/showthread.php?t=34837 for more, nya.