Thread: Ratio-wh0ring, when (if ever!?) is it polite to stop seeding...

...and let other tracker members have a go at boosting their own ratios?

Where is the line in the sand where you've stopped being a good seeder and have crossed over into ratio whoring territory?

How big of a buffer do you need/feel happy with/desire on a particular tracker?



What size ratio/buffer is gonna start p!ssing people off and losing you friends on trackers because you are just too damn good a seeder?

...Discuss!

PS Anything relating to ratio cheating is not welcome on this thread.

Ha, I wish I reached that point where I can be called a ratio whore. It's almost too difficult for me to build up a decent ratio with the pretty shite connection I've got.

But I think that the moment people are satisfied, is when they can download anything they want, and still have the highest user class attainable (non-VIP), still have one of the highest ratios in the site. But of course, to get that satisfaction, you're going to have to keep building your buffer. And so it cycles. ;)

For me I always aim for a minumum of 2:1 but it really depends on the tracker. For example my IPT ratio is 28:1 without really trying but with RevTT I have to be careful of what I download and can only manage a ratio just under 3:1. I have to admit that I am a ratio whore. I'll download stuff just to buffer my account. Right now im seeding Chinese tv series on CHDbits just for the ratio boost! Soon I will get a 1.3TB seedbox and start increasing seedtime instead upload amount.

---------- Post added at 02:02 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:51 PM ----------

For me I always aim for a minumum of 2:1 but it really depends on the tracker. For example my IPT ratio is 28:1 without really trying but with RevTT I have to be careful of what I download and can only manage a ratio just under 3:1. I have to admit that I am a ratio whore. I'll download stuff just to buffer my account. Right now im seeding Chinese tv series on CHDbits just for the ratio boost! Soon I will get a 1.3TB seedbox and start increasing seedtime instead upload amount.

The so called ratio whores are typically the ones with a seedbox, they have tremendous uploads speeds so that get the lions share of the uploads. Well, if all of them backed off at 2x upload, you might be left with a torrent that have lots of users with slow connections. At the end of the day it is good to have a lot of high speed seeders on a torrent, because others who download often want it right away and don't want to wait hours for it to download.

Case in point, when I go to download a movie (that I want to watch immediately) and if it starts at a slow download I'll just find another source. Typically I want something like 10MB/sec (or more!) download to my seedbox, so that it downloads in a minute or two, then I start streaming it to my home and watching it as it streams in. Especially for HD movies, I find 1MB/sec to the seedbox is too slow. What I do only works when there are high speed seeders.

I wasn't aware that there was etiquette involved with a "seeding time threshold" - I generally seed back to between 4 and 5 ratio and then either download myself or delete.

The only place where i've seen people complaining about seedboxes was at what.cd, and in fact is the only tracker where my seedbox is useless. The people there seems polarized with that "natural" x "unatural" ratios, as you can see at many members profiles, what they don't realize is that i earned most of my buffer by uploading my own music there and not whinning about how it was hard to seed with rusak jumping on every torrent.

As Canadian said, unless there are thousands of seeders, you won't get much upload from a home conection, this is where the seedboxes appers and give you those MB/s while downloading, people tend to forget that they only got the file fast because there were seedboxes on that torrent. The same with new torrents, can anyone imagine how useless races and pretimes would be if you got the files at 50kb/s? I'ven't even talked about how home conections have all types of issues like stop seeding to play a game, to your parent use the pc, to sleep...

Those servers are at the core of the bt world, and they are what spread the things fast, the peers liking it or not. A tracker without seedboxes must have other really good features, otherwise the users will turn to the fastest ne availible.

Stop seeding a file that is at my server is something i will never do.

"Ratio-whoring" has definitely become a problem for any private tracker, but I doubt that it has come to a point wherein your fellow members are getting personally mad at you for sharing too much, too often -- and resulting to lost friendships. As one of those small fish who only seed with a home connection, I'm more inclined at getting annoyed with the rules and the system.

i only ratio whore when i get to earn points for invites or other stuff.. like stamps :D

some trackers seem to promote seeding for extended periods of time but typically i seed to a 3:1 ratio or a week whichever comes first.

The only tracker I ratio whore on is BTN and that is because I just want to see how much upload I can get lol. With other sites I put freeleech on my seedbox to balance out my usage at home.