Ratio Enforcing

[metro.]

Okay, so on another unrelated torrent site, I was just sent a message being like

There seems to be a serious problem with members not seeding what they download, This is no good at all, Please can everyone make sure that you seed your downloads and keep them seeded for as long as you can, People not seeding at all and abusing the rules will now begin to receive warnings and if it continues then accounts will also be disabled.

They do a thing where certain torrents give you 2x, freeleach, etc.

So my question to you is:

Should overall ratio be important, or should a per torrent basis be enforced to maintain the most torrents? Or perhaps a hybrid of the two?

I have my thoughts, I'm just curious what others think.

[Mcgreag]

It's impossible to enforce per torrent ratio. If I where to take a random older and not so popular torrent here on bakabt and downloaded it I might have to seed for weeks just to get 1:1 because there are not enough people downloading it.

Also remember that seeding and downloading is in the end a zero sum game. The total uploaded for everyone can never exceed total downloaded for everyone. This means that for everyone with a better than 1:1 ratio there has to be someone with a worse than 1:1 ratio.

Bakabt has solved this in several ways. First the required overall ratio is less than 1:1, second it's not a real private tracker which means it allows downloading for people outside of the system. This in turrn means that upload credits are inserted faster than download credits are removed. And finally there are the bonus point system to encourage seeding of less popular torrents.

[kitamesume]

per torrent ratio is almost impossible to accomplish, one reason is that getting the ratios high would require leechers to download from you, what if that torrent had 100seeders and only 1leecher? you'll have 1:100 chance to accomplish a 1:1 ratio.

well not to steal ideas from others but, ABtorrents has a good idea of time based seeding, i mean they require a certain length of time for you to seed a torrent, not seeding for that length of time will get you flagged as a hit-and-run user, and its per torrent based. though still doesn't fix that bad per torrent ratio, and some users even abuse this by choking their upload to almost null so they wouldn't be wasting upload bandwidth though still accomplishing their target seeding time.

[Lupin]

Trackers don't expect you to get 1:1 on each of your torrents. What the expect from you is to try to reach 1:1 on each of them which is easily done by simply keeping the torrent seeding. They won't be looking at individual ratio alone. They are looking at hit and runs which they can determine by looking at torrents you've done downloading, has a low ratio and isn't seeding.

I primarily use 3 trackers (what.cd, hdbits.org, ADC) and none really cares about individual torrent ratio.

[kitamesume]

now that i think about it, shouldn't this topic go with torrent/tracker issues? since it concerns about trackers.

[Duki3003]

It's not a discussion about our tracker, nor a suggestion or issue. Technology board is fine.

[datora]

.
As stated pretty well above.  Let me re-state for fun:

On a 100% private tracker, a ratio system of 1:1 minimum (especially on each individual torrent) is basically a pyramid scheme.  At some point, a bunch of newbies will be stuck at the bottom of the Ponzi and won't be able to make ratio even if they seed for years.

Therefore, the system must be designed with 'escape routes.'  Several were mentioned above, in addition to how baka does it.  I'm really impressed with how well the hybrid system works here.

What happens here, and is effectively a requirement for indefinite availability, is that a pool of "superusers" put some of these torrents on their seedboxes and never delete.  I've run across torrents that are up with users who have 18,000+ hours of active time.  Do that math.

However the system is designed, encouragement of community members to dedicate themselves in this way is the fundamental thing that drives success.  I've connected to unusual, obscure torrents here and always, without FAIL, have been able to download, even if it's only one or two seeders at 10-20 KBs.  This is the first torrent community I've ever been in where I've never had the need to make a reseed request.

Especially when I run across anemic torrents like that, I reseed to 10:1 minimum, often 13:1 or 15:1, before I retire it, even if it takes six or eight months or more.  I check my Inactive list regularly.  Whenever I see torrents hanging out with 3 or 5 or 7 seeders regularly, I queue them back up out of archive and regularly re-start them, usually when I notice the seeds have dropped to 2 or 3.

Here's the crazy thing: they are rarely active and don't seriously impact my bandwidth.  No need to choke them because they get leechers so rarely.  I've collected about 100-120 torrents of this type (so far) that I never delete off my seed drive, and add one or two every week.  And, because I'm one of the only three or five seeds on some of these, over time I've built up stupid rations of like 30:1 on "dead" and "anemic" torrents ... cheers to the success of a semi-public tracker system.

It's really an education problem: teaching n00bs that it really doesn't cost them anything to keep older, anemic torrents alive.

[vuzedome]

Just keep them running, that is all there is to it. Enforcing will only make it harder and no one would want to join such a strict tracker.

[Pentium100]

While I keep the torrents running as long as I can (I eventually have to move the files to a hard drive on another server, seeding from a network drive is not as reliable; I also archive files to tapes, when I accumulate enough of them) getting high ratio on private trackers is hard, especially if I download older and/or less popular torrents (in a couple trackers I had to download popular torrents just for seeding as I did not want the files).  BakaBT (probably due to it being a semi-public tracker) is not as bad as the completely private trackers. After all, I managed to get ~380 ratio on a couple of torrents. On a different, completely private, tracker I only download during freeleech because it is extremely hard to have good ratio otherwise.

[metro.]

Okay so I'm glad I'm not the only one that thinks this way.

On said other site, they have it set up so if you donate then your ratio doesn't matter, which really just is silly. Also, due it supporting currently running TV shows, the likelihood of people maintaining older single episode downloads is an unreasonable expectation.

[Tatsujin]

Okay, so on another unrelated torrent site, I was just sent a message being like

There seems to be a serious problem with members not seeding what they download, This is no good at all, Please can everyone make sure that you seed your downloads and keep them seeded for as long as you can, People not seeding at all and abusing the rules will now begin to receive warnings and if it continues then accounts will also be disabled.

They do a thing where certain torrents give you 2x, freeleach, etc.

So my question to you is:

Should overall ratio be important, or should a per torrent basis be enforced to maintain the most torrents? Or perhaps a hybrid of the two?

I have my thoughts, I'm just curious what others think.

Little torrents I forget to seed properly so I end up like below 1.0 ratio for that torrent. Many torrents I do seed and my ratio for each of them should be over 1.0. Once I see something is finished, I stop the torrent from seeding. At that point, it more than likely should have over 1.0. I do this once every few days to stop torrents and move files.

Ratio is important, but to seed for weeks just because some admin, mod or member asks you to do so is not appreciated. As long as you hit your desired ratio for that torrent. That's my rule.