Strike while the iron is hot

[anon]

Today, we'd like to once again present the biggest problem for our coders' productivity. Currently, new mods are released as never before, even more than in the past at other boards. In addition, there are many other, unique ongoing projects of the highest quality. Until now this is all good, and for our mods' actual users, a whole advantage.

Almost half a year ago, we decided to disable the so-called "credit system", as it makes little sense to force someone to write something, only to then be able to download our mods. This method has gone outdated, so we removed it from our forum. Since then, the downloads amount has of course increased significantly, and the posts one slightly decreased.

But let's go back to our main problem. As it always happens, there are people who are jealous or simply envious of our great work, and simply want to hurt us and take the biggest slice of the pie. That's of course understandable, as we can with a little pride say we are the worldwide #1 board with such an unique, straightforward offer.

We have many times used the time where we'd usually meet up with our friends, or earn money, to invest it in this forum. SB-Innovation has become somewhat more developed, which is increasingly time-consuming. Every new project requires hundreds of hours of work, but we take the needed time and patience for new inventions. We do this for you, not for us.

There is a site (whose name is irrelevant) which doesn't respect our work, mocks us, and releases our products as theirs. Of course this fact alone doesn't matter to us, partly because we're not at such a low level - we simply don't need it. However, his page only exists to monetarily profit from our work, so it's our exact opposite.

In recent weeks we have had a huge decline in our amount of visitors, which makes us lack the advertising revenue we urgently need to pay our server. Also, our public image risks getting damaged if copies of our programs going by different names, to the point of being unrecognizable, keep on appearing and circulating around the net. (Although this somehow flatters us, as it'd mean our work is so good that attempting to copy it is the only alternative.)

The people behind this site effectively don't seem to know what they're doing. Without us there would be no new mods, without new mods there would be no money, and without money they'd have to either close the site or post only bad 0-day tools and other unneeded things.

Given this situation, it won't be long until we take the first steps against mod stealing. Maybe we'll have to stop releasing mods forever (at least for the public sector), or close registration and switch to an "invite only" system.

Reality is, in that case we'd be certainly taking a step backwards, which we can't accept. This article is only to inform our users, and everyone else that's interested, about our situation, and possible changes to our site to stop the mod stealing.

On this note, have a nice weekend and think about what many of you take for granted but what actually isn't.

The SB-Innovation Team

[vDD+wR]

First of all I want to thank you for the moderators point of view on the issue.
This is a really hard decision indeed, which has to made and as I got it, reactivating the credit-system as it was once, wouldn't be a satisfying idea.
Of course the advantage for the reactivation is that this forum might become more lively but I suppose the amount of possible spam-posts would raise too. So, that would only leave open the option for implementing the invite only-function which would keep away a huge amount of those, who are just signing up here for being able to download the mods.
But that would of course be against the principles of a free board and comes sowhow equal with a censorship. On the other hand this would of course make the board more attractive!
Nevertheless people are working hard here to keep the board as a good as it is at the moment and they are investing money to pay the server bills as well! From that point of view I would understand every decision that would help to increase the quality on the board. If that would mean to close the sign-ups in order to curtail and the number of people who don't appreciate your efforts and publish your mods under another name, I would support and understand your motives.
Keep up the fantastic work, guys!

greetings vDD+wR

[anon]

I agree with every point in your post. Reintroducing the credit system would make many people post just to get our mods (just look at 00DE now), while keeping it as it is now makes most members just download them and not being part of the community, which is sad, but we can't force them to participate.

In the other hand, I think making the board invite-only could solve the problem with the aforementioned site, and perhaps also make newly registered members post a bit more than they do now (at least, I'd do so if I got an invite to the best leecher-board in the Net), but at the cost or narrowing our horizon. Maybe some find this good, as we'll be drawing less attention, some of which could have been unwanted. I personally find it bad, because our philosophy is that P2P should be free for everyone - and our mods won't if we make the board invite-only.

It's a tough decision, but we can't be investing our time and best efforts in the mods & tools, for the people behind the site to cash on and rip them off.

[SealLion]

There is an idea to the problem at hand:

What my suggestion would entail is to delete the members who have not posted within, for example, the last year or last 6 months.

This would shorten the member's list, yet it would also decrease the the board being taken advantage of with respect to the mods being downloaded with out someone posting in the forums.

Its obvious that there exist members here who are the staff members of another forum, a.k.a. S****4.org and others I am sure, who are members here, yet do not post, only to download.


I also think that having the board become invite only would be a good idea.

It would increase board security to current members for one thing. Me and others wouldn't have to worry about tracker admins lurking and sneaking around, yes??
Is board security important?? I believe it is and should not be NOT considered.


It would also decrease the mods being stolen by other member's who are, or belong to, the other-guy-we-all-know-about.
What-ever the hell his name is again.

How and where would someone use the invites to this board??
On a private tracker?? I don't think so.
So that's one concern I would have with this idea.

One way for others to attain entry to the site would be to have an official IRC channel.

One could gain entry to the board from there, yes??

the board would set up dedicated members, perhaps. I don't know. Its just an idea.

One problem I could foresee with this idea is that the chatroom is not visited. There's no-one ever there. No-one comes to it. I came to it once, no-one to chat with. Would the same problem occur in a potential IRC room??
Its possible.
If it did occur, how would one gain access to the board then if no-one's around??
I have no idea.

Personnally, I think its OK that this board has a few member's who do post. A small community of sorts to put it one way.

But I do feel strongly that this board should delete member's from the Member's LIst who do not, or have not posted within a certain time frame. Again, 6 months....3 months.
TAke your pick.

Other private trackers do this. Why can't we do this as well.

The board would still be offering the mods for free. The board would not be limiting the downloads to anyone, only offering them via conditions, i.e. posting. whats wrong with that??

I'm a member of a board where it is conditioned that one post at least 2X on the board to be able to view .avi's.
Its the same principle.

Nevertheless, having the board become an invite only board would serve 2 ideas:
1. Board security;
2. Less mod theft

[vDD+wR]

good evening SL

I also think that having the board become invite only would be a good idea.

Actually i like the idea of an invite only board too! But this wouldnt solve the problem of inactive users, i think. In my opinion it would decrease the number of users with 0 posts a bit. But of course, it's better than nothing!

It would increase board security to current members for one thing. Me and others wouldn't have to worry about tracker admins lurking and sneaking around, yes??
Is board security important?? I believe it is and should not be NOT considered.

I think, it would be just a matter of time, till the admins, mods and other would get an invite...

But I do feel strongly that this board should delete member's from the Member's LIst who do not, or have not posted within a certain time frame. Again, 6 months....3 months.

There I have to agree too. There isn't any use neither for the board's life nor for any secruity and "anti-theft" reasons to let those singned up who don't have an amount of posts in a certain time.

To cut long story short, I can agree pretty on everything you're saying.

Just one idea on the invite system that I want to add: Maybe we could do this as torrent-invites is handling this atm. They have a special area inside the board, where newbies can request an invite for getting into the real board. This would require of course a lot of time and work from the mods. And another question how those people are seperated from those whom an invite isn't granted. (The critera for the selections i mean )
Of course this just an impression, and can be improved. Maybe someone has an idea how to improve the sign up process!


So good nite SBI members!

[SealLion]

good evening SL :wink

Good evening to you too, my friend.

Just one idea on the invite system that I want to add: Maybe we could do this as torrent-invites is handling this atm. They have a special area inside the board, where newbies can request an invite for getting into the real board. This would require of course a lot of time and work from the mods. And another question how those people are seperated from those whom an invite isn't granted. (The critera for the selections i mean )
Of course this just an impression, and can be improved. Maybe someone has an idea how to improve the sign up process!

I don't quite follow this at all.

Correct me if I'm wrong. What your suggesting is that SBI have a section inside some torrent site where SBI members would give out invites to SBI??

I don't think that'll work vDD+wR

discovery and becoming banned from that tracker site would be inevitable and unworkable.

Honestly, vDD+wR, thats too much work. Really it is. I don't think such an idea is workable.
Yes. I know. Its just an idea.

The idea that'll maybe work is board-enforced user posting, like Anon was suggesting above.

But then again, perhaps, that is, the board will wind up with a bunch of spam posts.

Not entirely workable either.

ONe takes chances with such an idea:

Angry members;
disillusionment from members with the board who therefore go to another place;
collusion of members with other boards to download material and then send it off to their new cheater's home..i.e. S****4-the-dog-in-continual-and-perpetual-never-ending-heat

But definitly delete the pple who've not posted within a decent amount of time. And quick-double-quick with that, too I say.
That should be the first step to undertake.

s#### is here. Thats obvious:Get rid of the pple who don't post---get rid of s****4 et al.


does this board seem concerned with mod theft??
Obviously.

Does the board seem concerned with member security??
That question hasn't been answered yet. Hopefully, and I'm sure the answer will be 'yes'.

Does this board have a tool to use to rid itself of non-posting members who only sign-in to DL??
Yes. And I've mentioned it here.

[Pickle]

i can make you sure those invites would be as rare as top level tracker invites. :) that is not a prediction simply is a fact.

[SealLion]

HOly Frak!!!!

I never thought about that!!!!

LOL. HarHarHarHar.....{evil laugh}.
{there should be a smiley for an evil laugh. cAn we plz have one??}

WEll. Aside from that becoming a possibility. Lets here what some other mods have got to say. So far. Only Anon has posted.

[shoulder]

Just to let everyone know, there's the german pendant out there which is a few days older and has a lot of posts, so everyone who is willing to use an online translater can have a look at it.

Klappe zu - Affe tod

[fromas]

how can we get the money to pay the server if we are invite only,
thats the main problem

[Pickle]

google checkout :)

[Manas]

how can we get the money to pay the server if we are invite only,
thats the main problem

We could tell the people that we'll open signups 10 mins every day
Maybe there will be enough guests then

[anon]

@SealLion & vDD+wR:

There is an idea to the problem at hand:

What my suggestion would entail is to delete the members who have not posted within, for example, the last year or last 6 months.

This would shorten the member's list, yet it would also decrease the the board being taken advantage of with respect to the mods being downloaded with out someone posting in the forums.

Its obvious that there exist members here who are the staff members of another forum, a.k.a. S****4.org and others I am sure, who are members here, yet do not post, only to download.

Perhaps we could do that to clean-up our database - if the board was like 4-5 years old. I think that isn't the way to go for now, because the kind of members you're talking about can easily re-register, while the ones that could have started posting in the future will feel discouraged to do so. I personally didn't start posting when I registered, but some time after that, and if my inactive account had been pruned I probably wouldn't be here right now.

I also think that having the board become invite only would be a good idea.

It would increase board security to current members for one thing. Me and others wouldn't have to worry about tracker admins lurking and sneaking around, yes??
Is board security important?? I believe it is and should not be NOT considered.

I understand your point of view, and acknowledge that if things keep on going the way they are right now, we'll have to switch to invite-only, but consider that:

• we code most of the mods available at our board (when one isn't made by us we ask its coder for permission to post it here, and make it clear that it's coded by him) because we want P2P to be free - not to be tied to possible uploading/ratio restrictions. If we make the board invite-only, we're adding another restriction.
• we need the advertising revenue to pay our server's bills, which we can't get (in its totality) if only a select group of members is able to access the board.

Don't get me wrong; maybe we'll end up doing so. But we have to consider these things.

...
How and where would someone use the invites to this board??
On a private tracker?? I don't think so.
So that's one concern I would have with this idea.

Definitely not They'd be handled as I've explained below.

One way for others to attain entry to the site would be to have an official IRC channel.

One could gain entry to the board from there, yes??

the board would set up dedicated members, perhaps. I don't know. Its just an idea.

One problem I could foresee with this idea is that the chatroom is not visited. There's no-one ever there. No-one comes to it. I came to it once, no-one to chat with. Would the same problem occur in a potential IRC room??
Its possible.
If it did occur, how would one gain access to the board then if no-one's around??
I have no idea.

Heh, this issue with the Chatroom is a separate one. I guess it depends on when you visit it, because every time I dropped by there were at least a handful of users talking

Even if we implemented the IRC thing, and where to host it wasn't an issue, we need people to be on it and handle this system - dedicated members, as you've said. But you can imagine that our Mod team already spends a lot of time moderating the board itself, and that most users probably won't have enough time to "patrol" the IRC channel - I'm not saying they aren't interested though.

So maybe this idea could work... but we need people that can take care of it.

Personnally, I think its OK that this board has a few member's who do post. A small community of sorts to put it one way.

But I do feel strongly that this board should delete member's from the Member's LIst who do not, or have not posted within a certain time frame. Again, 6 months....3 months.
TAke your pick.

Other private trackers do this. Why can't we do this as well.

Private trackers are private trackers. They chose to prune users for inactivity (regardless of how much they've participated, unless they're in an user class that's inmune to inactivity deletion) because for some this can even be a security matter.

We aren't a tracker, and to repeat this again, if SB-I had pruned inactive (0 posts) accounts in the past, I probably wouldn't be here now. It's a kind of double-edged sword.

The board would still be offering the mods for free. The board would not be limiting the downloads to anyone, only offering them via conditions, i.e. posting. whats wrong with that??
...

That we can't force someone to post to get the mods... furthermore, it may end up with people just spamming to download them, like you said in post #6.

...
Correct me if I'm wrong. What your suggesting is that SBI have a section inside some torrent site where SBI members would give out invites to SBI??

I don't think that'll work vDD+wR

discovery and becoming banned from that tracker site would be inevitable and unworkable.

I think he meant a sub-forum in this same board where we could give invites to the Mods & Tools section (which would be hidden until you got one) to people that have been active in the other sub-forums.

The idea that'll maybe work is board-enforced user posting, like Anon was suggesting above.

But then again, perhaps, that is, the board will wind up with a bunch of spam posts.

Not entirely workable either.

I think the same, too. This is why the credit system was disabled. On one side we have enabling the CS and having to deal with more spam posts - on the other one, leaving things as they are now and lose a lot of posting activity, not to mention making things easier for this mod stealer.

ONe takes chances with such an idea:

Angry members;
disillusionment from members with the board who therefore go to another place;
collusion of members with other boards to download material and then send it off to their new cheater's home..i.e. S****4-the-dog-in-continual-and-perpetual-never-ending-heat

But definitly delete the pple who've not posted within a decent amount of time. And quick-double-quick with that, too I say.
That should be the first step to undertake.

s#### is here. Thats obvious:Get rid of the pple who don't post---get rid of s****4 et al.

I understand what you mean. But how can we know his account has 0 posts? It's possible for him to have made some, or have created an account which did behind a proxy, so as to "bypass" this whole account deletion. And we can't go and delete all accounts with less than 10, 20, etc. posts. That's definitely unfair for all the non-stealing users that bothered to participate when they weren't forced to in any way.

You talk about "a decent amount of time". And have mentioned 3 months in your other post. That's exactly the amount of time that passed between I registered here and started posting myself...

does this board seem concerned with mod theft??
Obviously.

Of course we are concerned about it - it's our coders, and the time and efforts they put on the mods our members can download for free that s****4 takes advantage of and cashes on.

Does the board seem concerned with member security??
That question hasn't been answered yet. Hopefully, and I'm sure the answer will be 'yes'.

I think you already know this is one of our biggest priorities.

Does this board have a tool to use to rid itself of non-posting members who only sign-in to DL??
Yes. And I've mentioned it here.

My guess is that pruning all of the inactive members' accounts is easy itself - but the whole decision behind it isn't.

LOL. HarHarHarHar.....{evil laugh}.
{there should be a smiley for an evil laugh. cAn we plz have one??}

I think we already have one ->

We could tell the people that we'll open signups 10 mins every day

That's so BCG when the method Aurion once posted worked Although perhaps all we'll get is people using Check4Change to refresh the page every 5 seconds, which will put a lot of extra load on the server

[Aurion]

First of all I would like to congratulate myself & you guys for reaching that certain point where we will be setting foot in a fresher & nicer docks ! The first thing I had when I read the first couple of lines in of the main post,I thought why not really doing that ?! why not stop that bull-shit thinggy of those punks...we already suffered & still are with that fucker seba,so why letting other punkass useless morons steal our sweat & breath ?!

I might be over-reacting,I know but let's look at it this way,when I first came here I used to call this might place,my spot,actually it is,it was like a second real home for my non-real life activities,that's why I do want to get this new project done,and done real fast to feel real private...

So after all I'm still happy for that....

....but I think I'll have to explain so I don't get some jerks or bunch of noobs quoting my words & explaining them in their own point of view...I mean with happy that I think it's the perfect time for us to disappear off public,as I mentioned before,I will do it once again & say,it is definitely the 100% reasonable situation here as like any other private place,we opened this forum to have our own place where we can share our own funny toolz,so why not getting to the next level ? why not hover that curtain while we shot that picture ? why we let other people just star at us, I think anon's just explained it real good,and as we already talked about that & I think it's the very right time for it,I want to extra congratulate us for that decision despite being yet under planning/development,but one way ahead is something that I value in my real life,so why not moving it in here...

So let's see what real privacy we can reach,hang on boys

[SealLion]

Aurion, dude. You are the man, Yaaa!!
Right on. I'm with you on this.

I realize sharing the mods is important with the public, though what does one do to prevent the illegitimate use of another's mods and tools with out permission??