Only problems I've ever had on TPB were not finding things that I could find on other sites. Then again, I don't use Windows for either downloading or media consumption, I check torrent file lists as I'm downloading to make sure I'm not downloading anything suspect, and I've so far managed to catch wind of things like certain trusted uploaders getting hacked, spoofed, or just plain trying to cash-in, in-time to avoid getting worked over.

Those same users post to most of the other public sites as well, so I'm not getting where TPB is somehow particularly un-trustworthy. IME, other public sites seem to have MANY more torrents for a given search, often by orders of magnitude, so which one is really less moderated?

The REAL encouraged/discouraged is Private vs Public sites and trackers, and I'm not pretending that for all my caveats I haven't been just plain lucky. If you download regularly at all, Private is the way to go.