Info

exclusivity - Excluding some or most, as from membership or participation: an exclusive club.
trading - To make an exchange of one thing for another.


Fellow torrenters and private tracker enthusiasts,

    First of all let us let us make one thing clear, the purpose of this blog and the tracker levels is not primarily to help people with trading but mainly to give the members of the different trackers a feeling of exclusivity. This concept has been pariah amongst tracker staff as well as most people debating the state of tracker levels and trading. But it is a fact that most people take pride in having or acquiring things that are exclusive. So our question is, why should torrent trackers be treated any different?

    People are trading and will keep on trading and to be honest most of the high level trackers wouldn't be alive today if they hadn't been rated as "high level" trackers because of demand created by misplaced hype. Nowadays there are a multitude of different trackers and you will most definitely find a "low level" tracker with better retention, speed, community and what else, than what most of the higher level trackers can offer. Bigger and "better" trackers at the bottom fights to stay alive and to keep members on board while trackers at the top try to keep members out.
     But on the tracker scene as well as in real life some people strive to reach the top. It might not be better up there but at least it gives people something to strive for. And when you get to the top you don't want that newly found nice feeling to slip away so you try to stay there. So mainly thanks to exclusivity and members more prone to donate, the "high level" tracker tend to survive although offering similar or worse content than the "lower level" tracker.


    So is trading bad? Maybe. But look at it this way. If someone has really had to work hard to gain something they tend to realize the value of what they gained and treat it as such. And if you trade an invite for an invite with someone, there is a link between the two of you and a trust that is a lot harder to break than say for example an ordinary tracker invite giveaway to a random forum member where the only trust is a couple of fake tracker profiles.

    The people that have been in the game for some years know that tracker levels have been discussed and criticized for as long as private trackers have existed. When the rating really took of was when FST compiled the WTAW list. This was at a time when a new tracker launched once every second month compared to 10 new 0-day trackers launching every week. A time when there was actually real excitement among the community when new trackers were born compared to only yawns and the "Good-luck-you'll-need-it" seen nowadays.
    The list at FST has since then morphed into some huge compilation where everyone can add trackers, the rating never changes, where long dead trackers still glare at you and the massive amounts of trackers will get you longing for old times. It is a mostly useless and boring list. There has been some half made attempts to create new types of lists or copy's of the original FST WTAW list at different sites but most of them have fallen short.

   We at BTTL have come together to create a list that mainly tracks the levels of different trackers. Where the feeling of exclusivity in being part of a tracker or trying to gain access to one is the main purpose of the list. The graphics and appearance of the blog is second priority. And we thought it would be appropriate to use the original WTAW list as template. With the help of tracker users reading and contributing to this blog we will strive to keep the list as updated as merely possible.
    We at BTTL neither condone nor support tracker invite/account trading. We just accept the fact that it exists and that it won't seize existing.


tl;dr

The level rating (1-10) shows how hard it is to get invited, joining via application, trading invites or accounts etc. This is then compared to how big the demand for the tracker is, how many people that are willing or wanting to join e.g:
big demand + hard to join = high level
big demand + easy to join = medium level
low demand + hard to join = medium level
low demand + easy to join = low level
The number inside the [#] tags is an overall rating of pre times, content (incl. retention), speed, community and ability to keep ratio e.g: pre times: 6, content: 6, speed: 7, community: 3, ratio: 8. This equals (6+6+7+3+8) / 5 = [6].

      



Thanks and very welcome
-Trackerlevels / BTTL