I know that private trackers require users to maintain a good seed ratio. How exactly does that work out mathematically? If a bunch of users have seed ratios above 1, does that mean that there are some users who will forever be below 1, and thus end up getting kicked out, thus resulting in the private tracker just… shrinking over time?
If you are talking about sites that have a strict, non-negotiable seeding ratio requirement, it is impossible. Your only real long-term option is to write a script that will grab everything that gets uploaded on a 30-second cadence, and then aggressively super-seed that content back out. And this is regardless of what it is - this script runs 24/7, doing about 2,880 hits on the website a day for new content. Still, even with the script it will be difficult to have your overall ratio exceed more than about 1.5-2, and you may still get banned for individual seeds that never exceed 1 because no-one is very interested in them.
I have tried to use sites that have strict ratio minimums, and long-term success is impossible without an edge like the script I mentioned. It’s why I now work with sites - like myanonamouse - that have minimum seeding times for everything you grab, regardless if anyone else needs it. They tend to be far less stressful and user-hostile.
That is simply not true. I’m a member of many private torrent sites, and the key is to simply seed all of your content for as long as you have it in your collection.
Freeleech events allow you to build a large library of content that you expended no credit to download, but will get credit for uploading. Most sites have some kind of bonus point system for seeding content long term, and those points can often be used to buy more credit.
At this point, I have so much credit building up on a regular basis that I like to put terabytes worth of it towards requests just to spread the love around. I have managed all of this through simply perma-seeding everything with a computer that is on 24/7. My current internet speed isn’t even stellar, but the sheer size of my seeded content gets the job done. I tend to be actively uploading multiple things every second of the day now.
Tell that to TheGeeks. If you aren’t actively uploading - not just sitting there sharing, but actively sending data to anyone else - you’ll eventually be warned, then banned.
Back when I was trying to use their site, they had only one system: strict 1 ratio on a time limit. If you couldn’t maintain a 1+ ratio, and achieve it within a very limited amount of time, it didn’t matter what you grabbed or how long you shared back out, you got banned. At the time they had no other way to get ratio other than sharing back out - no freeleech, nothing. Which meant if you were wanting any content more than 2-3 HOURS old, you were looking at a ratio shortfall because there was no way to make up that ratio you were losing by downloading that content. There were simply too few peers after you to overcome the masses of seeders ahead of you satisfying peers.
It was absolutely brutal, which is why I now refuse to deal with any sites with that rule (1+ ratio with time limit) even if they have other ways (freeleech, etc.) to mitigate it. Like, f**k those sites. I’ve been seeding some torrents for close to 15 years, I have no problem letting shit remain resident in my client. So sites like MyAnonamouse it’s going to have to remain.
Well…yeah. The point of seeding forever is that you are uploading. Though I am not familiar with TheGeeks specifically, I imagine that rule is in place to keep people from setting a low bandwidth limit on their client and exploiting bonus points for free downloads.
Regardless, you are talking about a sample size of one. Most reputable private trackers have a required ratio that increases with the amount of data you’ve downloaded, eventually hitting 1/1 when you have downloaded enough content to be expected to be a good seeder.
TheGeeks are asshats. I had a similar situation and got banned. They are one of the only ones I have had this happen with, but you are not alone. I have heard many others complain too.
Yeah same.
NAS is running with everything I downloaded, seeding 24/7. I started back up about a year ago and my ratio passed 10 before Christmas. I did not download a single thing I didn’t want, but I try to stick to movies big enough to be freelech and downloaded seasons instead of single episodes, again as they are freeleech.
Fun fact for those strugling: my top 10 ratio seeds are all freelech and has netted a total of 2,6 TB. Not a single one of those files are newer than 3 years old.
It’s hard in the beginning, but stick to freeleech and keep building ratio, and before you know it you won’t have to think about it anymore.
Did that, seedbox full, idle, near zero traffic for month, barely reach 1.0 ratio. Big waste of my resources.
Nobody downloading because they know they can’t seed their ratio back up.
Tracker operator sold ratio passes at 1$ per GB…
That honestly just sounds like a bad site. Others are far more active than that.
You seem to be talking about a completely different thing than the comment you replied to. The commenter above was talking about long-term seeding being incentivized by the tracker (it helps with keeping torrents alive). While you seem to be talking about short-term seeding. A month is not a long time.
Not every tracker gives bonus points (aka BON aka karma) the same way. I advise you look for one that fits your needs and use it instead of the one you’re complaining about. (Some examples of what sites use for BON: torrent size, torrent age, seeding time, remaining seeders, total seedpool)
What exactly do you mean by super-seed? In torrent clients there is indeed something called super-seeding aka initial seeding but that does quite the opposite of “aggressively” seed anything. The whole point of super-seeding is to encourage other peers/leeches to share data amongst themselves and hopefully become seeds themselves. This results in your own torrent client avoiding uploading torrent data to the swarm more than necessary, it’s the opposite of building ratio if you’re minimizing uploading data.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-seeding
https://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0016.html
It might be you meant to aggressively seed on an internet pipe with high upload bandwidth e.g. one of those 20 Gbps seedboxes or similar, that would make sense.