I remember QuebecTorrent having a live donation me...

2008-09-27T15:01:00.000-07:00

I remember QuebecTorrent having a live donation meter. The problem with providing too much transparency is that large donations can make you look bad, and your monthly costs can become somewhat erratic as time progresses and you have to move hosts on short notice or what have you. Right now we have about $500 in reserve, but that's a comfortable place to be and we don't want donations to slack off because of it.

So yes, there are legitimate reasons to avoid divulging donation information, but there is also tremendous potential for abuse of power.

For me, donations seem to be one of the bottleneck...

2008-09-26T21:38:00.000-07:00

For me, donations seem to be one of the bottlenecks facing the torrent community. By that I mean that many of the more popular sites are very secretive about their donations and so it is often difficult for the rest of us to get a handle on how to predict tracker donations. My favorite TV tracker is a good example of this. There are masses of details about who is meeting the distribution costs (ie their ratios, up and down speed, nationality, time in the community etc) but whenever anybody asks about donations, they are fobbed of with something like "All donations go towards server costs) This makes me wonder whether such sites are true communities or just businesses for profit. The site does not advertise itself as a business but as a sharing community. So how come this information isn't shared?
I like sites such as One Big Torrent that show clearly how much they are receiving in donations. Which other sites go for transparency on this issue?

Comments on TorrentFries: Retrospective 5: Money

I remember QuebecTorrent having a live donation me...

For me, donations seem to be one of the bottleneck...