Rework: Leeching

[1.155]

BRUH WHY TF IS THIS A WHOLE ASS BOOK JUST MAKE IT SHORT AND SIMPLE c.to/c.io IS FILLED WITH RETARDS CHILL SHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESH

Yeah I CAN SEE that you are one of those "RETARDS"

[213]

BRUH WHY TF IS THIS A WHOLE ASS BOOK JUST MAKE IT SHORT AND SIMPLE c.to/c.io IS FILLED WITH RETARDS CHILL SHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESH

Yeah I CAN SEE that you are one of those "RETARDS"

i am thx xxx

[3.695]

Leechers are a thorny issue, or are they?
Let's start with a premise: at the heart of Cracked is piracy. What do you do when you can't or don't want to pay for a digital content? You pirate it.
Everything that happens on Cracked is based on the intention of spending less, or nothing at all, for a product or service offered by someone.

I want to make another analogy with piracy. In many European countries, piracy is illegal, but it is not prosecuted as a crime because someone who pirates a digital media does not have the economic means to pay for it or does not intend to pay for it, so they would not take advantage of it unless it got pirated.

The same goes for leechers. Leechers are piracy within piracy: they are unable or unwilling to pay for something, so they come to Cracked, which serves this purpose and is the reason for its success, to get it. However, the problem arises when Cracked imposes itself on them by saying: if you don't contribute by publishing content or buying an upgrade, you are the scum of society and get permanently banned.

A small digression: notice how warez doesn't work this way. Being a leecher has no consequence because you can't be restricted from torrenting something, and you aren't considered a leecher if you distribute content to at least one other person (the >1.000 ratio rule). On Cracked, since seeding is not possible, you have to come up with your original content, which is like saying: if you pirate a movie, go to a cinema with a camera to bootleg a film yourself. It doesn't make much sense since you pirate a movie because you can't access it yourself.

The never-ending leeching bans would work were it not for the fact that to ban evade, you only need a new email and IP address.
The automatic ban has no advantage other than increasing the count of registered users, counter that can be altered at will.

My suggestion is to stop banning leechers, because it is a measure that does not bring any benefit, and to remove the posting limits entirely. Before anyone starts screaming, "but Mastiff, if you don't ban leechers, they will take over the site, leech everything, enslave our contributors and fuck their wives!"... it's already happening, but we are still here, and people who enjoy the community or the marketplace still upgrade.

Where do you think most of the 2.65M users come from? Who posted 13.77M posts?
There are 30 times more threads than posts. Just banning leechers doesn't work.

We know the primary purpose of continuously banning leechers is to hope that they sign up again, pretend not to be banned leechers, upgrade (which ultmately benefits one person, not the community itself), and continue leeching silently, but it's clear by reading the statistics that it's not working. Let's look at two statistics: the average active users are 0.18% of overall users, and the average active upgraded users are even lower. We're talking about a number with many 0s.

These numbers tell us that people who sign up to take something and leave do not care about the community or upgrades, and they could not care less about bans. But even if they did, why would a ban-evading leecher upgrade knowing that multi-accounting is against the rules, that their favorite leaker will repost stuff posted on Cracked on Telegram or Eternia, that lots of users intentionally post garbage content with clickbait titles?

Whether you like it or not, those who do not intend to pay will not pay, and you will not be able to keep them out of the site, but they can at least change their mind if they engage with the community or plan to stay on the site for a long time. If you want to convert users into customers, you have to work on the site's quality (meaning that this suggestion won't change everything, but it could be a first step) and not kick your potential customers off the site. It's a successful business model if you have something to offer, and plenty of companies offer free plans that don't entirely ban their customers for not paying within a reasonable time frame.

My posts are more than Threads

@pfpcio on tg

[1.756]

u good bro?

Yeah, I've added a disclaimer for you and other posts.

[2.167]

away, only contact me over cio.

[1.608]

True.

I believe the site should remove the post limit per day fully. Instead give them 2 posts per day with no need to reply and access to hidden content and afterwords reply to viewcontent. This way they would want to upgrade. post limit wants them to make more accounts and unlock leave alone after banned

However people spamming for things should be warned and then banned. Good thread

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[1.756]

I believe one of the reasons why this forum is so successfull is because of its good concept on how to deal with leechers accordingly in a way that satisfies both parties.

Everyone is invited to come over and get that juicy content he initially was looking for, and with the restriction he can probably even get 1 or 2 more stuff/download/content.

But those kind of things are limited and if you want to get more, you have to provide more. This can be either your own contributions or, if you can afford it, pay your way through. 
The concept was done so it works for both ways. I don't see why this needs a change, but I can definitely understand your point.

The alternatives the current system offers to continue unlocking content are, of course, contributing or buying an upgrade, but also creating a new account.
It's undeniable that this third alternative is the one that, right now, works best for the vast majority of new users because it's immediate, has no cost, and has no disadvantages.

Cracked's target audience is mainly made up of young users. Services like Spotify teach us that users loyalty is the best conversion vector, but loyalty takes time, and young users usually have much time on their hands.

It's thanks to a freemium plan that users get used to using a product. It's what keeps them coming back. Some of them eventually upgrade to a premium plan once they realize all the benefits they were missing. But if they regularly get banned, have to sign up a new account, can only submit three posts in the same forum and ten posts daily, this only leads to frustration, and they will have the worst experience possible because they will feel like they are being hunted.

Because retention times are different for everyone, it makes no sense to expect users to upgrade before submitting a certain number of posts. It's a made-up number that does not represent anything, and I doubt leechers even know this number exists.

I don't think you/your partners have randomly chosen to make the Upgraded Tools and Exclusive Releases sections easily visible. I think you did it because you knew coders' job is to present exciting releases, to show freemiums what they are missing out on, and at the same time reward premiums. This is the sort of stuff that boosts the conversion rate, along with time-limited offers like discounts on holidays, not the fear of getting banned and the annoyance of having to create a new account.

With the upcoming theme and forums updates, and a better SEO thanks to the domain transfer, we may have loads of new users coming to the site, and that's why I think this change is reasonable to discuss now.

In the worst case, reactivating the Leechometer will get rid of leechers.
In the best case, the average number of active users increases, the conversion ratio increases, the general activity of the forum also increases thanks to freemium users, and Cracked gives the impression of being willing to test new approaches to reach an even bigger audience.

[1.753]

The all point that this server survived for 3 years is cause of replays limit is absurd coming from a new member let alone coming form a hq member as you 
why absurd cause then leachers will just get everything without even caring leaving like on your post