Does dl free (freeleech grr) significantly improve peers on trackers?

[stoi]

As most people know, i hate freeleech, i think its more the actual term freeleech than anything else in all honesty, so from now on lets call it DL free (just to satisfy me lol).

I am not a member of any other tracker, and we have never had dl free periods before on BCG, i have never experienced DL free apart from on public trackers lol

So im just wondering if trackers that have DL free periods (as long as its not on everything, and all the time, but sparse ones) significantly increase the peers on a tracker (downloaders/seeders) or does it just not have any effect at all in downloading habbits.

and i am talking DL free even though you still have to seed back to 1 either with uploading, or seeding time (our SP system, and the like), Not total freeleech where you can hit and run everything you download, just your download does not get added to your global ratio for the period of the dl free.

as you can tell i have lived in a cave for 5 years lol but im just curious as to whether it does/does not have a dramatic effect.

[integral]

I'd say it does improve peerage. I'll tell you about some DL Free systems I've experienced in my torrenting since you've been in that murky cave all this time. :)

There's global DL Free, where download amount, or ratio altogether, is disregarded. It's kind of progressive, and is now being used in a few different trackers. I doubt you want this, as it is hard to do on a tracker with a large amount of users.

There's DL free period. This is where all torrents on the tracker become DL Free. This will of course increase peerage; people will not be afraid to damage their ratios. People will also want to stay on the torrent longer to get the most upload they can, since they know the torrent will be popular. Yes, there will be overseeding and potential hit'n'runs, but with your great SP system, the smarter and arguably more desirable user on your tracker will be able to get a 1:1 ratio.

And then there's DL free torrents. Specific torrents can be designated as DL free (packs, for example). It has the same phenomenon as DL free period, but in a much more controlled way.

Sorry for the long post, but I just wanted to tell you that DL free can be good. I think it'd work well on BCG, but it's up to you to choose what you'd like to do, of course. :)

[yevgeny]

definitely, it brings more activity.

i think you get a lot more hnr with uncounted download which i guess is why some sites have double upload to entice people to seed much longer, although a lot do just out of goodwill.

[stoi]

well if we do, do this, and its a very big if. those that hit and run will find themselves in KL before the DL free period is over, so i dont think we need to worry about that.

Dl free all the time has been discussed, i brought it up just before or it may have been just after a well known 0 day tracker brought it in last year, lets just say other staff hated the idea, and they still do, so i do not think we will be going down that avenue any time soon.

DL on everything for a certain period, will be how we do it, if we do it.

we have just put the packs on the tracker, so that is a possibility in the future.

I think the problem with us is, we are a very specialized tracker, most members have what they want, there is not a lot of new games coming out for anything these days (xmas it will pick up) we have an average of 10 seeders per torrent 6000+ torrents, 60,000 seeders. (I know it does not exactly work like that but it sounds good lol) but only .5 leechers per torrent, 6000 torrents, 3000+ leechers.

but are the lack of leechers because.

Ratio and promotions/demotions (scared to download) in which case this will help.

Nothing new coming out, so no one wants anything (this wont help)

Our downloads are that fast, even a year old torrent you can get at over 1MBs, that leechers are just not leechers for long on the torrents. (if its this it wont greatly improve leechers, but it will improve seeders).

so its a quandry lol

[aaatoel]

I think that it helps by increasing the activity at a tracker. Also, people will seed their torrents longer in order to increase their upload amount. Hence, everyone is happier. Though, some hnrs are inevitable but we have to look at the bigger picture which is more activity and more peers in the tracker! :)

[Intr4ns1t]

I think the increase in peerage during a free dl period is most significant in the older torrents myself, as it gives people a chance to grab stuff that they feel would hurt their ratio under normal conditions. At the same time, it allows the people that sit there seeding torrents for long periods of time due to being unable to seed back, because of the age and hidden nature of old torrents, a chance to hit 1 to 1 on those torrents.
All in all, I consider free dl to be an asset to a trackers activity, as long as it is distributed sanely, and is in line with the tracker itself.
I'm not sure what kind of activity the older torrents on your site have, but I do know that alot of "dedicated" trackers end up having to do free dl periods just to get a shuffle of who is seeding older torrents and to promote at least attention to the back end of the torrent index, if you get what I'm saying. I am of the opinion that the majority of users on most sites rarely look through the back end of the index, because they know that they will have to seed for a lot longer than they might like. Compounded with the buffering addiction that a lot of newer users have, it leaves the old stuff neglected except for those periods of free dl.
At the end of the day, I guess it would have to come down to how active the back end is, on a normal basis, regarding whether free dl would be beneficial to your site.

[stoi]

Well on the last 65 torrents on browse (i have it set to 100 per page) we have 12 leechers, so its not great, but its not bad either.

But like i said previously, i dl a crappy PC game the other month (for my wife and daughter), it was on the back end of browse and i got over 1MBs on the thing, so thats over 16 months ago it was uploaded originally. and it took me 15 minutes to download.

I do know not every torrent on the tracker will be like that though, but if most are, then that may be the reason for lack of leechers, they just get the games so bloody fast, its a false positive type thing.

we are still very much undecided whether to go for this or not in all honesty, hence this post, and the poll on our front page and thread in our forums.

we will see!

[Intr4ns1t]

Are those leechers leeching, or partial seeding? It seems to me that those speeds may be a direct result of good members in all honesty.
On a lot of sites, you may see a bunch of seeders, but all of them have their upload speed capped at like 2kBs, especially on sites with any kind of seeding bonus implemented.

[vodopija]

I think yes, but the effect of DL free is much stronger on small trackers (ScL had one and there were more peers on torrents). For me BCG has great system and I thing there is no need for change (if I want some old game SP points will help me achive 1:1, DL free would incrase activity on new and popular torrents). Of course it could be good thing for actual ratio. Maybe for packs only. There a lot of great sites that never had DL free, KG for example.

[stoi]

Every single one of them is leeching, and yes i have just went and checked on them all lol

its against the rules on BCG to partial seed, unless its a pack.

just to add for your edit, everyone is downloading at over 20KBs, some are downloading at over 200KBs

[Duckater]

I dont think you should just look at the number of leechers stoi m8 the important thing is the number of snatches. If your getting the snatches on torrents then all is fine :)
Being a specalist tracker with good speed (reading over the site here that is clear) then the chances are like your self most users are getting stuff so quick they aint appearing in the leechers list long :)

As for free leech we do it on torrents over 4 gig in size that are not MMA as we realise that these torrents on site are next to impossible for our members to get a ratio of 1 on :)

[stoi]

lol if we done it for over 4 gig, thats most PS2 games, Most xbox games, Every 360 game, every Wii game (apart from scrubbed versions) and every PS3 game.

and i think your right, but surely if ppl were leeching, then they should be seeding, so seeders should go up as well lol

we may give it a try and see. it cant hurt that much if its just a 1 off for a couple of days, and it would prove a good benchmark for this poll as well.

[Duckater]

One idea for ya stoi m8 have one day a week where ps2 games are dl free upped that day till midnight then next day xbox then pc games and so on but can also make it so just scene release games of that day are dl free :)
Just a thought as it looks like you after idea's :)

I get what you mean about size of torrents and it was just an example on how we work an might give you an idea that may work for you :)

[Intr4ns1t]

One idea for ya stoi m8 have one day a week where ps2 games are dl free upped that day till midnight then next day xbox then pc games and so on but can also make it so just scene release games of that day are dl free http://filesharingtalk.com/vb3/../../images/smilies/smile.gif

For your site, I think that would definitely be a good idea for a test. +1 Duckater.

Nevr hurts to try it out at least ;) If you have to many problems with h'n'r, then you have your answer.

[stoi]

Well the big problem is, we have the XBTT backend on our tracker, and none of us are really top notch on C++, we can fiddle our way around it and hope for the best, but we are in no way pros at it.

We just managed to do the dl free the other day on our backup server (in all honesty we havnt really looked at it before then) but im not sure if we can have that sort of thing, or just a blanket dl free accross the board with it. I dont think we can have *2 upload and all that malarky either, but again its something we just havnt looked at in all honesty.

and the other problem is, Everyone does it lol i hate following everyone and like to run it my way, so pride is a big - to this, (at least im honest anyway lol)

[Duckater]

While playing with it on backup server maybe try a 12 hr free leech for members on a weekend and see if it increases the leechers on torrents for that time :D

[stoi]

well if you mean do the 12hr freeleech on the backup server one.

we have 3 members (all staff) and 1 torrent lol, thats basically all it is, a testing server, things get coded on that, if they work they get transfered accross to the main BCG site.

[Duckater]

No try on main server, make sure all members know what actions will be taken against any hit and runners and it is a trial that will help decide if it is a thing that may be implemented :)
People like free leech so not like take an advantage of it in trial format :)

[integral]

The only real way you'll find out if free dl works on BCG is if you try it, in my opinion. It seems you've opened up to the idea, so that's good. It might work out, it might not. And yeah, other trackers may have free leech, so you won't be the first to do it, but it's not like most trackers these days aren't clones of each other already. ;) Hope this works out, it's really good when uploaders get in the spirit of free dl and upload some really nice packs and such.

[stoi]

dont worry about that, that will be stipulated and is mentioned in the poll on BCG, if they want to go into Kl after # of torrents, thats up to them.

it may actually weed out the bad from the good as well.

and it will be for 2 days minimum (unless it crashes the server with all the extra peers lol) and peobably 2 days maximum as well.

[internazionale 1908]

it will increase leechers and with that The bad seeders too but to clean them we have you and the rest of the staff!

But in the end will compensate

cheers

[mrnobody]

Download free on all torrent for certain time period does increase peer numbers. However, it comes along with bunch of hit and runs. People snatch all latest stuff, buffer there, once they lack leechers, they delete them and jump over new torrents...that's usually the trend imo.

Download free on certain torrents only, like pack, increases peer number for that particular torrent. Everyone with box, awaits for those torrents to be uploaded and once they are, the peer list is full of seedboxers.

Permanent download free like that of FTN, increases peer number. I doubt they get much hit and run though, even after they removed minimum seeding time period.

[integral]

BCG has a lot of users. If it's free leech, on a tracker that doesn't normally have free leech a lot, seeders will stay. For the people who do hit'n'runs, it's their loss; the rules, and SP system are laid out to them plain as day, if they choose not to follow the rules, they will be demoted, as stoi said. People will most likely hop on torrents that are free leech even if they don't want it; they want to create that all-mighty buffer, so worrying about seeds isn't a problem.

[Swift]

100% works , it will work on BCG users will surely enjoy it

[TP635]

Expect a huge increase in your server load during that time. This may result in an offline(timeout) error, and what is seeded back during those time is not updated in the stat.This is the reason why I never really look forward to dl free time. It does not improve my ratio.

[Duckater]

Expect a huge increase in your server load during that time. This may result in an offline(timeout) error, and what is seeded back during those time is not updated in the stat.This is the reason why I never really look forward to dl free time. It does not improve my ratio.

If you continue seeding thru that time it should update to tracker when it all sorted including stats that where sent during that time :)
One way that can decrease the server load is set the update time to 1 hour so then it takes away approx 50% of the updates :)

[Swift]

ohh and another thing freeleech is good to users without seedboxes

[Nemrod]

I think yes, they help to improve peers.
And they help to people with slow connections as well, although in BCG that is not an issue.

[stoi]

I dont think server load will be that much of a problem, even though these are new servers, we have had 100,000+ peers before, and it handled it pretty well. (we have just over 60,000 now, so thats another 40,000+ it "should" be able to handle.)

The other thing is, we sort of pride ourselves on never having done it before (not following the masses and bring in SP so we didnt need this) so deep down it still feels wrong lol

[Duckater]

stoi its your site and you people there have to do what you think is right for the site as a whole :)
What works for one site may not for another, but I do really admire you for tlking about it in the open here to judge peoples feelings, either way you decide to go with this I hope it all works out best for the site :)

[Nemrod]

I dont think server load will be that much of a problem, even though these are new servers, we have had 100,000+ peers before, and it handled it pretty well. (we have just over 60,000 now, so thats another 40,000+ it "should" be able to handle.)



Believe me, may have problems. Sites with many less users than you have big problems when they do free downloads.:huh:

[Mr.sharer]

how about give the users a 20gb data limit to leech .. yea a 20gb (or more ) of chosen data freeleech .
the problem with freeleech is users with really fast connection (20mbit+) can utilise the freeleech period to the max and users with less speed say 512 KBps only can leech less for a given period of time.. that way you can have some control on the amount they leech regardless of their connection speed .. ;)

everybody loves freeleech stoi :)

[stoi]

but, they use the PHP announce, and their servers are not as good as ours.

no offence to them, they run what they can run on.

and its taking me 5 years to get these servers.

we have 2 * 1U Servers

each 1U Server has 2 servers in it.

each server has

quad core CPU
8gig ram
blah blah blah ^^ thats the most important bit lol

we have DB on 1, and and the site XBTT on the other (1 is just getting built up now, and no idea what we are going to use that for lol)

It may very well crash the servers, because at times its running slow now, but personally i cant see it (touch wood).

yeah but you can upload less as well, so why should you be able to download the same amount.

and not everyone, i hate the thing lol

[disconny]

FL at BCG would be worthless with the seeding policy. Well, unless you want to have a huge ratio I guess. Still for the average user it is useless.

[SgtMajor]

Try Ratio Free on Requests as a starter? They are old games and might improve the snatch list on them, and it would give you a gentle intro into how you might want to take it further?

The problem you have is loads & loads of your new members will have been indoctrinated with FL somewhere or other in the trackers they have, and there is a plethora of trackers out there that make getting what they want totally FL 100% of the time.

Having to deal with your SP system for some will still be daunting, they are only interested in getting to 1:1 as quick as they can, not in having to seed for XXX hours after XXX days of seeding etc etc. Your older members love it, your newer members will not and will not start a download due to being daunted by the SP system.

[stoi]

well i was thinking freeleech on recycled torrent, but eventually every torrent will be recycled so...

and like i said in an earlier post, i dont know if we can even do that with XBTT, but we are thinking about getting rid of XBTT because you cant do SSL with it, and we want to make the full site SSL sooner rather than later, so we may have to go back to a php announce.

and as to your point about new members, our referal system should be up and running soon i hope, so leave it to long and we are going to have them to worry about, at least the new members have been there about a month now, so they "should" know what to expect.

[nemesis01]

I would certainly say it does increase activity, just check out danishbits where the freeleech torrents have sometimes hundreds of leechers and the regular ones nowhere near that amount, I go for the freeleech ones on there atm as my ratio dropped down and need to be poweruser again.

then it's POWERLEECH woohoo.:D

[maxitout]

Holy, at times of freeleech I have been able to use my seedbox to get up to 50-60GB plus in 1-2 days. That were the best seeding days ever.
And they worked best because when many people want to seed, they have to download first. That means lots and lots of people you can upload to :)

And yes I do think that freeleech strongly improves activity because their is a strong incentive especially for those that have problems seeding usually.

[kondrae]

BCG isnt hard to seed at so the effect of more peers wont be as large.

also, you can ask bitgamer what postive/negitive effects their DL have

[stoi]

I cant, im not a member, im not a member of anywhere else hence why i asked here, so maybe you could enlighten me? even if its in a PM.

[1000possibleclaws]

i don't see the point in making freeleech periods for bcg cause it's already basically freeleech anyways.. If you're not willing to help seed a torrent for a few days then you probably don't want the game enough to play it.

[deadalive1]

If you're not willing to help seed a torrent for a few days then you probably don't want the game enough to play it.
Good point here.

[stoi]

but its not, downloads get counted, and everyone knows downloads are a ratio killer.

this is an extreme case but it proves my point.

a few years ago i had over 100 ratio on BCG. it was about

1 gig downloaded, 100gig uploaded, and i was so proud of that.

then i seen a game i actually wanted (funnily enough i still havnt played the thing, some PS2 game.)

it was about 6 gig i think, but anyway my dl went to 7 gig my upload to 106 gig ratio plummets to just under 18 from 100, i could have cried lol and to get it back to 100 i would have to upload 600 gig on that 6 gig game.

obviously that is a very extreme case, but it proves my point, that dl added to your ratio, kills your ratio more, than just not uploading (or upload being taken off for some reason anyway).

why do you think trackers have freeleech/dl free, because dl doesnt count.

what i am trying to say is, a PU with a 1.7 ratio, may dl 10 old games, but can only get a 1 ratio, all those ones, put that 1.7 down over time, so he ends up loosing PU, just becasue of what, he wanted to download.

even i know thats not right, but on the other hand, what to do about it is the problem lol

[1000possibleclaws]

Keep Power User exclusive to members that help seed? I'm not power user on BCG and I could care less :P For the longest time I seeded with my home connection and was grateful for the seed point system which allowed me to reach 1:1 much more easily. Now I'll download onto a server and FTP home (for the occasional game I dl, im not a big gamer) to help the swarm. If a user cares about their ratio enough to prevent them from downloading games then imo they are pathetic and I could care less about them as users. A 1:1 ratio should be considered good, and everyone on BCG who follows the seed rules will have that automatically, plus a bit extra if they help the retention be seeding longer.

Imo your seeding bonus on BCG is already generous enough, although from the poll it seems I am the minority. (I voted yes because I took the poll as a general question, not specific to BCG which already has a system in place)

[stoi]

well maybe your correct, the poll on BCG is this

If we had a dl free weekend, would you download?. (dl will not be added to your global ratio, but you will have to seed back 1 of the torrents size, either with uploading, or SP, no Hit and Runs allowed)

I download anyway. 46%
I have everything i wanted. 10%
About Time, YES!!!! 28%
Does not interest me either way! 17%

Votes: 1,220

so it looks like most just dont need it.

[Funkin']

I think it brings in more activity too(although the only time I really take advantage of it is when hard to seed music sites have it). But to me, BCG is already freeleech because of that excellent SP mod. I know that I will get to at least a 1:1 ratio on every torrent. So I'm never afraid to download anything.

[ghurka]

well maybe your correct, the poll on BCG is this

If we had a dl free weekend, would you download?. (dl will not be added to your global ratio, but you will have to seed back 1 of the torrents size, either with uploading, or SP, no Hit and Runs allowed)

I download anyway. 46%
I have everything i wanted. 10%
About Time, YES!!!! 28%
Does not interest me either way! 17%

Votes: 1,220

so it looks like most just dont need it.I was sort of expecting that. I'm happy with the way things are there so I would guess that most of the established members are too. I might be wrong but I would expect the 28% to mainly be newer members.

Anyway, it seems that the majority of members are happy with the way things are. I know you're always looking for ways to improve the site but as BCG is unique then doing what other sites do is not always what is needed at BCG (if that makes sense!).