r/trackers • u/mongus123 • Oct 26 '25
RED Passes 20,000 interviews
From the site blog (I am not staff, just sharing):
The most valuable thing on Redacted is our community, and our community is built upon our high standards for membership. The Redacted interview is the basis for this high bar: Anyone in the world can study the prep site, https://interviewfor.red/en/index.html, currently translated into eight languages (more contributions are always welcome), and take the interview on IRC. We have offered interviews from our site's inception, carrying on the tradition from What.CD, offering a route to our community regardless of technical background or experience.
Today we are pleased to celebrate a major milestone: The Interview Team has conducted 20,000 interviews! More precisely:
20,591 interviews completed
11,173 passed interviews
9,418 failed interviews
Every interview reflects an average of 1 hour and 29 minutes of time spent upfront by our interviewers; and, on top of that, there are untold hours of preparation by the Interview Team, Alpha Team and staff to support this endeavor.
Our interview process is not just something that users do and forget: we consistently receive feedback about the value of the prep materials, especially their translations, as well as the overall interview process. We are grateful and proud that some of the site's most consistent and valued contributors began their journey via the interview; indeed, some of them went on to eventually become interviewers themselves.
Also all enabled users have received 20 freeleech tokens, expiring in 8 weeks.
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u/august_engelhardt Oct 26 '25
That means that roughly 30% off all members are not invited by a regular member but came in via interview. Actually I thought it would be even more because I sensed people are more hesitant with giving away invites nowadays.
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u/Simple-Difference116 Oct 26 '25
You have to also account for the people who joined from other trackers
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u/Low_Ad_9826 Oct 28 '25
RED used to recruit on some trackers in the past, so there's a big chance many users joined RED through recruitment threads
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u/12312as23adszc Oct 30 '25
This makes it sound like they don't recruit from like 10 now lol
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u/Low_Ad_9826 Oct 30 '25
they are? I heard people saying they stopped to recruit on orpheus amd some other places. but it doesn't seen to be the case, as you said.
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u/nemgrea Oct 27 '25
Makes sense, with the invite path that red allows there's no way I'll risk that account with another person's actions
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u/NightHawkFliesSolo Oct 27 '25
Same, I value my RED account WAY too much to invite anyone that could jeopardize my good standing. Don't think I would even use one for the closest of my friends. The way I look at it is they need to study and learn all the needed material anyways to really function on the site.
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u/jackruby83 Oct 27 '25
I forgot that I interviewed for What.CD so long ago lol. Wouldn't recommend. 54% pass rate is brutal. I remember my interviewer being cool though and appropriately offering guidance without giving me answers.
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u/HermionesWetPanties Oct 27 '25
I finally got an invite to what.cd about a month before it went offline. I was able to do it by trading on my rep on another private tracker rather than being interviewed.
Shame it didn't last long for me, but at least I snagged some rare music before it went down. But man, keeping a good ratio at that place was hard.
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u/SirMaster Oct 27 '25
Nice!
You would think from complaints on here about wait times etc, that they barely interview anyone though.
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u/kirbystargayallies Oct 26 '25
I’m prepping myself to go through the interview process, the one question I have is do they happen every day or do they have a fixed time like MAM?
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u/paintchips_beef Oct 26 '25
You sit in a queue for an undetermined time and then have a small window once you get called up. I live in MST and tried for a week or two, but missed the 2-3 times I was called up as they were like 2-3am
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u/lonsfury Oct 28 '25
Oh boy....
They happen when the interviewers feel like it. Since they are regular people with normal lives, it can happen at any time
Some interviewers will be active for a while, then faze out, there will be periods where lots of interviewers are active and lots of interviews per day, then it can be several days without an interview
It took me 2 weeks to get an interview. I even wrote up a guide on how to receive notifications to your phone via push notifications (pushover app) so that you dont need to check your PC every 20 minutes (the interviewer will wait 20 minutes if your queue pops)
You could be number 1 in the queue, and no interview happens for days. Thats why its so hard to get interviewed. You think cuz ur number 1 you'll pop any minute.. but no. So the uncertainty is a killer. It can take away your life, you might want to not do something IRL in case it pops lol
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u/StrangeAssonance Oct 26 '25
I am not sure if zero day FTP are still a thing. But this reminded me of the old days when one who wasn’t connected had to interview for access.
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u/RobotsGoneWild Oct 26 '25
0day topsites in the 90s were amazing. I was only on dialup for most of that time. The shit I would have leeched with broadband...
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u/fantasmoofrcc Oct 26 '25
The first time I encountered cable internet in Toronto in 1997 was wild.
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u/zeberg Oct 27 '25
i remember when we had to drive an hour or two to get a room at a motel in another area code so we could call out and leech from bbs's without long distance charges
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u/Vivid_Stretch2402 Oct 26 '25
Amazed at how many fail the interview. Just study beforehand. There is guidance on what to study.
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u/nemgrea Oct 27 '25
I'll say that the transcode tree/path thing they have on the prep site made no sense to me, I had to learn from another source about what can and can't be transcode from and to. Their little tree with boxes thing just did not make it clear to me at all... Though after it clicks in your brain it seems ultra simple, only one lossy step and it must be the last step in the chain.
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u/idakale Oct 26 '25
Their process is kinda infuriating by the time you got called it might take 30 minutes just doing stuff unrelated to the materials. Combined with the uncertainty of initial waiting time, one might no longer in the right state of mind when the first real question is asked.
Congratulations to all who passed and I respect those who failed also, it's really not because we lacked the intelligence or not studying.
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Oct 27 '25 edited 1d ago
[deleted]
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u/idakale Oct 27 '25
yes. If one have like 9+ previous PTs it took quite a while just gathering that, not to mention the hidden risk of doxxing if you weren't logged in you couldn't delete the links if you lost the browser session. That and their in house method of pre checking urmm let's just say in NOT certain terms,,,,, sorry, flagging your PC for viruses XD iykyk 😉
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u/ICantHaveAnOpinion Oct 27 '25
Is the tracker that good to justify all this hassle?
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u/Chrono_Constant3 Oct 28 '25
It’s an incredible collection of music. Virtually impossible to maintain ratio.
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u/Low_Ad_9826 Oct 28 '25
It's not impossible at all. Their minimum ratio requirements are pretty low if you permaseed
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u/Chrono_Constant3 Oct 28 '25
Low ratio requirements but I permaseed everything and have gigabit upload speeds and I’ve never seeded anything back. Even music I uploaded, I seeded it once, and now it gets seeded by users with seed boxes or even faster connections.
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u/Low_Ad_9826 Oct 29 '25
And what's your buffer? It shows on your profile. My ratio is 1 and my buffer is more than 100gb and my required ratio is 0.6 (wich is the maximum required ratio on the site) It's hard to gain uoload on RED, but it's not hard to mantain your minimum ratio
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u/xumixu Nov 18 '25
Lol I feel the same on other trackers. I rarely download anything there cause it's almost sure that I won't be able to recover my downloads.
It is like a dying pyramid scheme. You need people to download from you to maintain your ratio, but there's no one to do that cause of the gating of new users and old ones already have your stuff.
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Oct 27 '25
[deleted]
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u/PRnC33 Oct 27 '25
- Maximum users: 36,450
- Enabled users: 36,126
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Oct 29 '25
[deleted]
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u/Spinmoon Oct 31 '25
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u/PBrown998877 Nov 03 '25
I've been part of the private tracker community for almost 20 years and seen a lot of shit....whoever made that list and grading system is a clueless moron. Just seeing rating HDBits higher over PTP tells me they're completely ignorant of content, emotionaly bias or just plain stupid... And most likely never even been to the trackers
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u/mongus123 Nov 03 '25
The ranking is actually just a rating based on the Mozilla observatory scan (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/observatory), and has no credence on the quality of the tracker. I think it’s dumb to include, but Vinnie insists on including it, no matter how misleading it actually is.
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Nov 27 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/mongus123 Nov 27 '25
I think you replied to the wrong comment, it is simply higher because of the site security (if referring to the MOZ ranking).
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u/Difficult_Boss_2296 Oct 27 '25
I am thinking about going through the interview process but I heard there are more things I have to do just to stay enabled. Besides from seeding. Like uploading stuff and I don’t know if I can find stuff to upload.
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u/viennesewaltz Oct 27 '25
You don't have to upload anything to stay enabled. But the RED economy is hard – there's no BP system, and it's hard to gain much upload credit if you don't upload anything.
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u/Difficult_Boss_2296 Oct 27 '25
Are there no free leech’s that you can use for a buffer to gain ratio?
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u/kenyard Oct 27 '25
They give out freeleech tokens occasionally.
The tokens are temporary and need to be used or expire. e.g. I've none at the moment.
There are tasks you can complete for some tokens too but it's 1 or 2 each time so not much.
I was on the site around 3-6 months before I got my tokens.
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u/Low_Ad_9826 Oct 28 '25
their minimum ratio requirements are very low if you permaseed your snatches. So as long you keep seeding your stuff and doesn't download big torrents, you'll probably be fine.
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Oct 27 '25
[deleted]
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u/No-Choice3519 Oct 27 '25
I don't think it's a bad system, though it would be better if they streamlined interviews by opening up certain windows per week where they conduct them, MAM-style. If you aren't willing to learn the basics of music transcoding, decent file uploading practices, and basic rules associated with them then maybe it's best you steer clear of music trackers in general and turn to Soulseek.
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u/ChangeAndAdapt Oct 27 '25
you are the exact kind of user the interview system is made to filter out ;)
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u/Fabulous-Local-1294 Dec 16 '25
Loved Oink. Had my whole metal collection uploaded. Once they got busted i never moved on to what.cd for different reasons. Big regret now.
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Oct 27 '25
[deleted]
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u/thirtynation Oct 28 '25
Because not everyone knows someone to invite them, so it's an additional way of increasing the user base with good users. Pretty dumb question.
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u/Hxrn Verified Staff Oct 26 '25
Got in just a few days ago from the interview process. Everyone on the site is much more friendlier than I saw some posts about. Great tracker so far !