Hello, have you guys considered going for a system where it's based on seed-time rather than just ratio?

I think that would be very beneficial for a music tracker, especially one with the concept of panda.cd (can't expect too many snatches on a torrent unless the artist is famous already). Keeping the torrents you download somewhere on your HDD is not all that difficult when most torrents are 70-100 MB big.

Either seed it for x-days/weeks out of x-days/weeks or to a ratio of 2:1 I think could work.

Another idea could be to have the normal ratio requirements, but also a bonus system where you can trade in points for gigabytes uploaded (preferably where you gain points just by having the torrent active in your client).


Thoughts?

I think this is a great idea. All the torrents I've downloaded here have been seeding pretty much constantly. However, since my internet connection isn't top speed my ratio isn't even at 1 yet. I think a ratioless system would encourage more downloads which is what would benefit the artists most.

Agreed. On SaveTheCoratee (RIP), there were points given to seedtime as well as activity on the site. It really, really incentivized downloading and other features on the site.

I know that I depend on the internet connection at my school to do most of the seeding I do, so unfortunately I'm not able to seed all of the time, but I love downloading this music that I have never heard before and am likely never to hear anywhere else.

I agree here. One of the biggest problems for new sites (and i've been on a few) is leeching activity. The standard ratio system of upload versus download is becoming outdated amoung trackers. Even waffles has a seed bonus sort of. So at the very least some sort of bonus would help.

Ideally I think some sort of ratioless system with required seed times would be a good move. This site is all about unrestricted and freely available content so any way to make access to the content easier will be beneficial to both the site and users.

Basically anything which encourages people to actually come hear and download the torrents. No site is going to get anywhere if no-one downloading from it.

I am for this idea. Seeding rewards is a more effective method of incentive.

I like the traditional ratio system. Mostly because I am familiar with it and because I don't see anything wrong with it. It's the most effective way of making sure torrents stay seeded. Just take a look at what.cd.

I am a part of a lot of Bittorrent trackers and so far I have been able to keep a high ratio at all of them.

My ratio here isn't high at all. That's because I decided to snatch all the torrents. It slowly starts to crawl up though. I was on ratio watch the first few days here. That were the only seeding 'problems' I had. The torrents are on a 10Mbps upstream connection, and with that it was easy to get out of ratio watch. Also note that the ratio requirements are really low here, no need to have a ratio of a gazillion if you can do just fine with being around a 0.8 ratio. One can even download 5GB without ANY requirement to seed.

I don't like bonus points systems because it distorts the economy of the ratio system. I don't think it's a good idea to implement bonus points here if seeding is already pretty easy.

Last edited by Hidden (b28a74e6) 13 years, 7 months ago

glh5 wrote:What.cd hardly has a traditional ratio system, especially after the implementation of the new ratio seed requirements. I can download a killer amount of torrents, and seed them, even if no one is downloading them from me, and still keep a 1.0 ratio. I think their new system works far better than any other ratio system that exists. I believe that keeping torrents seeded for availability is far more important then making sure that people download from you just so you can keep a good ratio. This shows more economic benefit and gives people more of an incentive to make files more available.

What.cd has a traditional ratio system. However, their requirements are different.

The most important point I was trying to make is that bonus points do exactly the opposite of giving incentive to seed. Just take a look at PTP. Everyone can get bonus points there in a dozen of contests, and for seeding torrents. This way, anybody can easily maintain a ratio of 3+, which means the incentive to seed is starting to disappear. Because higher global ratio -> less global seeds.

Same goes for ratioless trackers. There are actually a few that work (like BTN) but for example PTN is dying (so it seems to me) because of it. I still think the trackers with as few FL and BP as possible are the best. Those are the only ones that reflect a real image of how much one is sharing. And I think that's what it's all about after all. I can have a 20 kB/s connection and seed 1000 torrents on it but I won't be sharing a lot like that.

Last edited by Hidden (b28a74e6) 13 years, 7 months ago

glh5 wrote:
I disagree with the idea of bonus points for seeding. The success is dependent on the tracker and the community within, really.

glh5 wrote:
So how do you think the tracker should be set up? More similar to What's?

I think the tracker is good as it is now. Maybe a similar formula to what's (the one that determines your required ratio) could be set up later, when / if seeding gets harder.

I've sat on the fence here for a bit. Mainly because while I agree that it's beneficial for artists that as many people as possible snatch their torrents - I'm not convinced that a ratioless tracker is the way to go. From the ratioless sites that I've been on - there may be an initial flurry of activity - but in some cases it appears to have the opposite effect with a decline over time. I think a ratio system makes it more clear cut what is required opposed to minimum seeding times.

A bonus point system would have to be implemented carefully in order to factor the number of torrents into the reward so as members seeding say 100 torrents benefit more than those seeding a single file to make it fair. But again I'm not overly fond of this idea as I think it creates a kind of 'second currency' on the site that devalues ratio.

A variable required ratio is quite a nice idea, which I wouldn't be opposed to adding.

Another way I propose would be to introduce 'free leech slots'. A free leech slot would be given to power users+ every 2 weeks, and one could also be obtained by making an artist donation (accumulating to a maximum of 10). A member may use a free leech slot on any torrent to make it permanently free leech for them to download. This could act as an extra incentive to reach power user status, and/or donate to artists. Any thoughts on this?

Panda wrote:

As a ex-sysop and current coder of a ratio-less music tracker I will say this. Do not ever create a music site and have it be no ratio it will turn into the biggest headache and it ends in no one seeding torrents for more than the required few day's. Unless every torrent on the site is on a seedbox and is going to stay on one forever the few super active members and the staff can not keep every torrent on the site alive forever. We definetly learned this the hard way at our site. Bonus points for seeding might help but only if the purchasable items end up being worth it for the user to have to seed said torrents for week's or even months to earn the points. When we first re implemented our bonus system after switching to gazelle. I tested something out by downloading every torrent on the site to a seedbox and seeding them for the required time and I had accumulated enough points to never have to seed anything else ever again. This was made possible by the no ratio system as I couldn't get in trouble for mass downloading and not picking things I wanted and seeding them long term to gain enough buffer to get more. So from the stand point of someone who's already been thru it and am now trying to pick up the pieces of it enough to have a site to keep moving forward with. It's not worth it.

Last edited by Hidden (0c6ac596) 13 years, 5 months ago

I will be seeding this stuff for a very long time. What we currently need though is more publicity, more artists who share their works and more uploaders in general.