Thread: Your opinion on the ratio systems

Originally Posted by glasshandle

Both systems obviously have good and bad points. I think if a site is going to have a ratio, it NEEDS bonuses and freeleech opportunities. I think IPT does a great job of this. They have lots of freeleech stuff, and a lot of it is stuff I would want to begin with. Sites like what.cd that don't have much freeleech make it really difficult for those of us without the extra funds for a seedbox, but thankfully they just altered their ratio policy. I'm someone who hates having a negative ratio, though, so I'm still playing the game over there.

I would thumbs up for your opinion.
Bonuses are good ways to improve ratio for those who has slow uploads, but they can keep seeding to get bonuses and exchange for upload.
The only thing is, they can still limit their upload speed to get good bonuses if the site does not take care of seeding speeds.
So it is very hard to maintain a perfect system that benefits everyone.

I hate ratios. I love trackers such as P*N, THR, GFT, F*N who don't use ratio. It's all about seeding and traffic. Love such trackers.

TvTorrentz.org has a different system of "ratio". They call it credits. One credit = i gb upload. newbie gets 50 credits and has to adopt minimum 4 torrents. Two season packs and two episodes. And you lose one credit for each failed gb upload after a 7 days grace period! And they keep tab on your seeding hours.

Since getting a seedbox, I have had no issues with ratio on the majority of the trackers to which i belong. For some trackers, it is an absolute necessity unless you have a very fast connection and leave your computer on 24/7.
Now whether the ratio system works or not? I'd have to say yes and no.

Yes, because it stops people from abusing the system, hit and running, leeching, it makes files available for a much longer period of time, increases download speeds, keeps the health of torrents up.


No, because of the pure bandwidth waste! I am sure I am not alone in downloading huge files that i dont want just because its on freeleech or very popular, to increase buffer. I think about 40 - 50% of what i download is purely for increasing ratio stats, saving up for a rainy day, so that i can download the files i want in the future, even if they are ratio-killer torrents. This probably adds up to a huge amount of 'wasted' bandwidth, cause i think most other people with seedboxes are doing the same thing.
This is bad because I think it inflates the piracy numbers alarming the various anti-piracy organisations. This also causes ISPs to shape bandwidth, block access to torrent sites etc.. All this ultimately increases the cost of internet.
However, i am not sure exactly what percentage of the total piracy bandwidth is used on ratio-building downloads. It's probably a small percentage now, but with droves of people switching to private trackers since govts and companies are cracking down on piracy, this problem will get a lot worse.

I believe the solution lies in a combination of ratio-less system, no HnR policies, minimum seedtime, seed bonus, and other perks for those that maintain high-ratios instead of penalising those with low bandwidth. This system works for smaller trackers like BtN and P*N, but not sure if it would work at TL or IPT.

I prefer a no ratio trackers b/c people can just get a seedbox and buffer the account. If a tracker has a large number of good members, DLding/seeding would not be a problem. Those who have a seedbox will most likely seed for a day or 2. Those who have DSL tend to seed for days to months.

My speed isn't that great so I tend to seed for a month or so to make up for the lack of speed.

I think we should sum up that if a tracker has ratio, we need points and lots of freeleech for slow members, if it is ratio free, we need HnR rules, seed incentives, and a way to stop people throttling their upload bandwidth, i thin PTM does a good job of this, get points for seeding each torrent, more points for longer, points give lots of power(VIP, upload credit) if you download 50GB before you upload 50GB you get one download slot, but after that ratio don't matter, with points you can buy more download slots.