Launched in 2008, The Pirate Society (TPS) has become one of the most successful file sharing discussion forums currently online. TPS features BitTorrent news, discussions, invitation giveaways, requests, private tracker reviews as well as seedbox discussions, support and reviews. This forum is also known for its many tracker recruitment threads and insane number of direct connections to private trackers through the ‘Community reps’ model. While being an excellent file sharing forum and a gateway to the world of torrent trackers, TPS has mostly been a closed community. Public registrations on this site have almost always been closed and potential new members needed to pass an IRC interview conducted by TPS staff members. If you didn’t like the idea of going through an interview or didn’t have enough experience in the BT scene to make it inside, you now have another chance through The Pirate Academy.
The Pirate Academy is TPS’s latest project that opens up the site even to absolute newbies to the BitTorrent scene. With the launch of this project, TPS has essentially become an open registration BitTorrent forum and new members are now allowed to bypass the IRC interview. However, those who choose to do so will not immediately gain access to all TPS forum sections – instead, they will be directed to the Pirate Academy – a limited access forum that has ‘lessons’ and tests for new users. In short, new members who go through all the lessons and pass the test for each lesson, will gain entry into the fully featured TPS main forum. In case you didn’t get the idea, here’s a complete overview of how The Pirate Academy works. This description was quoted from a thread posted by Soopy on TPS :
[BEGIN QUOTE]
We have two main forums available to anyone who has access to The Pirate Academy. These forums are called "Classrooms" and "Lounge". The Classrooms forum consists of 3 sub-forums called Lesson 1, Lesson 2 and Lesson 3. Each Lessons sub-forum will bring you to a thread that has the lesson material. Here's how it is mapped out:
- Lesson 1 - Introduction to the Pirate Society. This lesson will teach the user how to use a forum and its features and what The Pirate Society is.
- Lesson 2 - IRC Basics. This will teach the user how to user the basics of IRC. Some of it focuses on the popular IRC client mIRC while also keeping it general so the user can use the material with other clients.
- Lesson 3 - Getting to know the BT Community. The last lesson teaches users about private bittorrent trackers by explaining what private trackers are, how they operate, and what you should do/shouldn't do.
The Lounge forum is a general forum created for new users who need help, have a question to ask, or just want to test out the forums features by creating general threads. We also have a dedicated IRC channel setup named #academy for users who need help and want answers quickly (and possibly give more incentive to learn IRC :)
The Pirate Academy will consist of 3 quizzes. One quiz for each lesson. The user will find the link at the end of each lesson at the last post which will bring them to the appropriate quiz. Once the user is done filling out the quiz and clicks Submit, it will be sent to our Graders Area where TPS staff will look over the submission and give it a grade. In order to graduate from the academy you must pass all 3 quizzes. If the user is already a New Recruit or higher, they will get the TPA Graduate icon. If the user is in the Initiate usergroup they will receive the TPS Graduate icon and be promoted to New Recruit.
[END QUOTE]
Initially, it might look like a lot of work to pass all the quizzes. However, in reality it’s not that hard even of you are a noob – the lessons are cleverly devised and well detailed along with rich instructions accompanied by screenshots – these let you in on all the information you need in order to pass the tests. Sure, it might take some time but passing will allow you full access to one of the better BitTorrent forums out there ( which has 9600+ users, ~100 community reps and 75+ tracker recruitment threads ).
Image: A screenshot depicting part of TPS main forum. To unlock some of the sections seen here, members are required to progress up the user class system.
As we mentioned earlier, TPS is currently in an open signup mode. However, this is a little different from a regular open registrations period you’d often see from a BitTorrent forum. Again, the text below is quoted from the forum post by Soopy (one of TPS SysOPs):
How does The Pirate Academy fit in with open signups? Every new user who registers will start out as an Initiate. So, initially, they will have very limited access to the forums. This will allow us to keep new users in a controlled environment. The open signups are, of course, not definite and will be temporary. Our first open signups will close once we reach a certain amount of users so we can test out this system on a much larger scale. Depending on the results, we might open up again and increase the load.
Because the users do not require a screening process, we will be very strict with the Initiates. Every user coming in will be scanned against our failed interviewee's database and banned/disabled users. We will not hesitate to disable a users account if something comes up.
Open signups will be available only for a limited period of time so get in while you can. All users who apply through the register link below will gain access to The Pirate Academy
Site Name: The Pirate Society (http://www.thepiratesociety.org)
Signup URL: http://www.thepiratesociety.org/register.php
In the meantime, IRC interviews will still be open – those who pass the interviews will immediately gain access to full TPS forums and will not have to go through The Pirate Academy.
Invites Channel: irc://irc.thepiratesociety.org/invites
Related Articles
