DimeTOS:Information Requirements

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Overview

All torrents on DIME require full information about their contents, and it must be available in two places: externally and internally. Full details are mandatory for all audio content and all video content. None of it may remain unlisted or undescribed under an assumption that everyone already knows it, nor as a surprise or a riddle or an Easter egg. Bonus and filler material must be delineated and detailed the same as everything else.


What to Provide

What is sufficient information? We consider the following to be the minimum:

Artist

Seems obvious, but we get torrents all the time where the uploader just doesn't think of it, or expects the artist's identity to be obvious from something else ("Everybody knows who played at that venue on that date" or "Everybody knows that that's the only band I seed" or "Everybody knows whose songs these are"). Every DIME torrent must be available and accessible to every DIME member, not just for a preconstituted cadre of cognoscenti. The name of the artist must be in the page title and should be the leftmost item in it.

Recording date(s) in unambiguous syntax

DIME is an international forum, and the European and North American date styles are both wrong here. You can prevent the ambiguity by naming or abbreviating the month, or by using ISO 8601 date syntax, yyyy-mm-dd. For more details, see the Naming Rules page in this wiki.

All dates must be stated according to the Gregorian calendar: additional listings by other calendars are optional and, if given, must specify which calendar system they reflect.

Compilation torrents and other torrents with recordings from multiple performances (including those with filler or bonus tracks) need to include the dates for all content.

All dates must include the year, the month, and the day of the month. Relaxations of this requirement may be granted by the moderators on a case-by-case basis. Do not post material with incomplete or imprecise dates without explicit clearance for that particular torrent.

For material sourced from a broadcast, if you can't find out the performance date we may accept the broadcast date instead, but you have to say that it's the broadcast date.

Location(s)

The date and the location are needed not only to inform the downloaders but also to differentiate the performance in the torrent from any officially released performance by that artist of that song. For studio work, we may also need the take number unless there is evidence that none of the officially released recordings of that song by that artist were recorded at that session. Location information must include both the city and the country, and (if applicable) the state or province.

The state is required for any location in the USA or Australia, and the province for locations in Canada. Elsewhere, the city and country are sufficient unless the country has two or more cities by that name; if it does, you must make clear which one is the site of the performance.

In most cases the name of the specific venue is nice to have but not required. However, it is mandatory when there is a legal question: for example, if there is an NAV List site in that city, or if an NAV event was taking place in that city on or near that date.

Compilation torrents and other torrents with recordings from multiple performances (including those with filler or bonus tracks) must list the locations for all content.

Ridiculing this requirement by naming the continent, planet, galaxy, or such, or going into pointless detail about the construction of the building or the landscaping around it, is neither clever nor original. #location or #venue

Set list

For some torrents, such as an interview, the notion of a set list clearly does not apply. For others, such as a jazz improvisation, it doesn't apply either, but that will not be obvious to every DIME member, so you must explain why there's no set list; simply omitting any reference to the idea of a set list is not acceptable.

Occasionally, you may have a torrent by a relatively unknown artist and no means of finding out the song titles, and it can be legitimate to say, "set list unknown," but explain the reason and supply as many titles as you can, even if you make guesses (but indicate where you're giving a guess instead of a known title).

Don't omit the set list out of sheer laziness and then make excuses. We've had users post shows by artists such as the Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan, give no set list, and then insist that they had tried to compile one but did not know — and could not find out — the name of even one song! Some things just are not credible.

The external copy of the set list must be in the description area or the outboard info file; song titles in the filenames are neither adequate nor advisable.

Lineage

We will generally not ban a torrent if the only missing external information is the lineage (it doesn't make sense to, since the uploader can just reply that the lineage is unknown), but you should state as much of the lineage as you know. Besides, if you don't mention lineage at all, downloaders will infer that the lineage is so embarrassing that you don't want to admit to it. If other information is also missing, we will ask for the lineage as well.

In some cases, however, lineage is required: for example, to settle a question of permissibility, such as video material that may have been reencoded.

Also, if another torrent of the same material is posted with lineage information, it will be treated as an upgrade over one with unknown or unspecified lineage.

Video characteristics (for video material)

Windows users can gather these statistics with Gspot, and Mac users may use MPEG Streamclip or MpegInfo. Linux users may use tcprobe, part of the transcode package

See this page for how to interpret a Gspot window.

Required specificiations for Standard-Definition video:

At minimum, the format: PAL or NTSC; or if it is neither PAL nor NTSC, a statement to that effect plus the frame rate and the video resolution. (PAL-M material from Brazil should be shared in NTSC if it is torrented on DIME.)

Required specificiations for High-Definition video:

For High-Definition video, at minimum your description must specify:

  • the file format (container)
  • the video codec
  • the horizontal and vertical resolution
  • the scan (progressive or interlaced)
  • the frame rate

We very strongly recommend that you also give:

  • the video bitrate
  • the display aspect ratio
  • the audio codec and number of channels
  • the audio sampling rate and bitrate

As with other types of video, the duration and source are always appreciated.

See this article for an illustration.

Recommended additional details for all videos:

Preferably, the internal and external information of every video torrent should state the audio codec [usually ac3 (Dolby Digital), mp1, mp2, mp3, or PCM], the audio and video bit rates, and the video aspect ratio.


Audio characteristics (for audio torrents that are not CD-DA-ready)

Audio torrents are expected by default to be burnable by the red-book CD Audio standard: lossless files that decompress to 16-bit, 2-channel PCM at 44100 samples per second, each file decompressing to a track that runs for a minimum of four seconds, and each separate discful having a maximum duration of 79m59s.

When you post audio material that cannot be burned to CD-DA, it is contra bonos mores of live music trading to say nothing about it and to leave it as a surprise for others to learn only after they complete the download. Therefore you must call it to their attention prominently near the beginning of the torrent's description area and again in the internal .txt or .asc file, making an explicit statement that the content is incompatible with the CD-Audio standard, including all details of how it varies from it:

  • For lossless non-red-book audio:
    1. the sample rate
    2. the sample size
    3. the number of channels, or an adjective such as "monaural" or "stereo" or "quadrophonic" that implies it
    4. a listing of all audio files inside the torrent content that run for less than four seconds, preferably including their durations (this is required only for files inside the torrent, not for samples attached to comments)
    5. the playback time of each discful in the torrent that exceeds 79m59s, if there are any.
  • For audio files in lossy codecs when they are permitted on DIME: the compression codec and the bit rate.

For example, if you are torrenting lossless 24-bit, 96-kHz stereo, there are no tracks under four seconds and no discs over 79m59s, and there are two channels, state this where it will catch downloaders’ attention:

This torrent is incompatible with the CD-Audio standard. The sound is in 24-bit stereo sampled at 96 kHz.
#nonredbook [level 4 header]
#what [level 2 header]

Where to Provide It

The information detailed in the preceding section ("What to Provide") must be supplied both externally and internally. Please see this bullet in part 2 of DIME's general policies for permitted torrents.

Externally

The purpose of the external copy is for potential downloaders to make an informed decision about whether to join the torrent in the first place. If your account has torrent posting privileges, then you can see on DIME's Upload form that the outboard info file is marked "optional." A lot of users misunderstand that. The external information is mandatory. The option is where to put it.

The external copy may be in either of two places: the description area, or the outboard info file. (The outboard info file, when the uploader has used it, is accessible at the View Info File link just below the description. Its maximum capacity is 65,535 bytes.) The information itself must be presented there; the following are not acceptable substitutes for the required external information, though they may be supplied as additional places to repeat it or as places to find supplemental details beyond our requirements:

A link to another page or another site, because that other page can be changed or removed or its site may go down, temporarily or permanently.
A pointer to artwork, especially artwork that must be downloaded through the torrent, because the details must be in highlightable text ready to copy and paste and ready to read without doing any downloading or going to any other location.
A comment on the torrent, because users cannot be expected to scan all comments for what should be easy to find in the description or the outboard info file; moreover, by default a visitor to the torrent's details page lands on the newest pageful of comments, so as soon as there are enough more comments after it to start another page, most users will not think of paging back to see older comments.

If we ban your torrent for insufficient information, even though you have the internal file among the torrented contents, it's for lack of a satisfactory external copy. That can be remedied by emailing the moderator desk with the information lacking from the externals, with the DIME torrent number in the subject line. If it's enough and there are no other problems, we will lift the ban and reenable the torrent. It is your duty as the uploader to provide the missing details, and the torrent shall remain banned until you do so yourself; information that the moderators receive from an outside party will not get the ban lifted. Do not post another torrent of the same material unless we find some other reason for reposting and we tell you to do so, and do not alter the internal .txt file of your torrent.

Internally

The purpose of the internal copy is to provide the information to the downloaders as part of the fileset along with the music, so that they're sure to have it in their files for themselves and for the people to whom they give copies.

The internal information must be in a plain-text file of the .txt or .asc filetype among the other files in your torrent. (If your torrent is a DVD, make sure that your internal info file is outside the VIDEO_TS subfolder; it could be in the wrapper directory or in a different subfolder.) It must be in true plain text; don't rename a marked-up word-processor filetype like .rtf or .doc to .txt or .asc, but make sure you give it as true plain text. As with the external information, artwork may serve as a supplement but not as a substitute; the internal information has to be present in plain text.

DIME requires you to include checksum files in your torrents. You must provide a checksum file in the .md5 filetype for a torrent without FLAC content, and either a fingerprint file in the .ffp filetype (not .ffp.txt but .ffp) or a checksum file in the .md5 filetype for a torrent with FLAC content.

If you supplied all the required information in the description or outboard info file but your torrent was still rejected by our system for lack of an information file, or if you included checksums in the description or the outboard info file but the torrent was rejected for lack of a checksum file, the reason is that you provided the information only externally without an internal copy that the software could recognize.

#where

Content Already Present in Another Torrent

The BitTorrent protocol works better the larger the swarm. It is counterproductive to split users up among two or more torrents of the same material. Moreover, extra torrents are bulk in the database. Therefore, duplicate torrents are not permitted.

There are a limited number of exceptions, as explained in this section of DIME's FAQ. If your torrent is one of those exceptions, such as an upgrade, an alternative source, or a repost under the four-day rule, you must provide a contrast clause (see this link) near the top of the description area. If the required statement is missing or incomplete, the torrent is at risk of being banned as duplicate material or for insufficient information.

#alreadyontracker

Languages

Finally, all the required information must be provided in English. You may optionally supply it in additional languages as well, but only if a version in English is included.

#languages
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