[guygee]

Maybe I missed this on the FAQ, or maybe I'm just too picky or something, but it drives me crazy to look at my hard drive and find a torrent folder named "My Seed (4)" (not downloaded from Trader's Den, but still...). One has to admit, etree has a good system for naming directories/folders, but it doesn't fill the needs of the wider lossless torrenting community. Could we agree to to some sort of standard?

For one, maybe we can agree that we would like our folders to line up with the following precedence order:

1)Artist
2)Date (implies venue)
3)Show (for multiple shows on the same date)
4)Source
5)Version
6)Encoding

Spaces screw things up, so maybe we could agree to have none?
UsingCapsAsDelimitersWorksPrettyWell.

I am just throwing this out to encourage discussion, but I suggest the following etree-like format:

Artistyyyy-mm-dd[a,b or Early-Late].Source.Taper/Seeder/SourceSiteTorrent#_SpecialNotes.flacf/shnf

For commonly torrented artists, let’s all agree on something: is it bd, Dylan, BobDylan? Let’s make a list of suggested standards.

Use a for Early, b for Late, or just spell it out.

Date implies a venue, venue should be listed in the info file, so should we include it? If so, I suggest it go under "Special Notes" (see below).

For Source, we have sbd, aud, fm, preFM, ??? (what do we call 192 kb/s satellite?), and I suppose we might add audMD for audience mini-disc, or something like audNAK300 if we used some cool recording hardware, but whatever it is, we should agree on it and make a list of acceptable types. AudMaster and AudFirstGen would be cool too. Again, let’s make a list

For Version, it could be the taper's handle if he/she seeded it, or the seeder, or better, where we downloaded it from. Dime uses torrent #'s, so we could say Dimennnnnnn. Trader's Den, we could use the thread number, so we could add to the recent 1966 Jewels and Binoculars (26 CD Set).flacf the notation:TD7011, since that was the thread number (? or is it a torrent number after all?)

For "Special Notes” we could include the bootleg name and transfer, eg.
"JewelsAndBinoculars-EACSilver" or something similar. After all, this boot was also seeded to STG, EZT, and who knows where else, and I would like to know if I have the version EAC'ed from silver and from a reliable source rather than just some unknown stuff.

Also, for Special Notes, we could include any special guests that appeared, like withGarcia or just wGarcia, since that information can really make a difference in choosing a show you never heard before...

Another special note might be like "J'sRemaster", so if we know "J" does good work, we will want the show, (or otherwise, NOT).

My stealth motive for this rant is that I would simply like all of my torrent files to line up, burn them to DVD in order, then strip the music out on the hard drive, move the leftover folders to a common folder, cut-n-paste the folder names, and make a really nice little html tradelist that links to infofiles, md5/st5/ffp's and artwork. The way it is now, I spend hours searching the torrent sites for information.

Also, we probably have to take into account that some people’s hardware may still have a relatively small limit on directory name and filename lengths. I may be spoiled, my limit is 256 characters that I can burn to data DVDs. What are some of the older limits we may have to accommodate? (on the other hand, if you are still running DOS 3.1, please upgrade. I am not going back to the 8.3 limit).

Is anyone with me here, or is this just too much buzzkill?