Freeleech - good or bad for leechers?

I've noticed two interesting trends developing lately:

1. There are quite a few freeleech trackers that have opened up recently.
2. The number of leechers in many freeleech trackers is usually pretty low.

Now, (my) logic dictates that making a site freeleech should increase the number of leechers, since people won't have to worry about snatching stuff that might hurt their ratios, however the trend I've noticed seems to contradict that.

I have several hypotheses as to why this is happening, however I'm interested in hearing some additional thoughts on the matter.

You on about new or established trackers pro?
If new trackers I think a lot of the time people sign up to be nosey and hence seems like large member base when in fact a lot will never return.
So not many true member of the site hence low numbers on torrents compared to the number of peers.
If you mean established sites now thats a different story and could be a number of reasons but will have mull it over a bit more before answering :)

I'm seeing this at both established and new trackers, but I see your point regarding the new ones having a lot of members cycle before things stabilize, so let's discuss the established ones then.

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Originally Posted by pro267

I'm seeing this at both established and new trackers, but I see your point regarding the new ones having a lot of members cycle before things stabilize, so let's discuss the established ones then.

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I know bitmetv tried this but then decided against it after beta testing.Maybe if there's someone privy to what influenced their decision,they could go a long way to answering you.

I am not going to saying free leech is a bad thing, if it used right but some places are using it to try and encourage members to use the site and doing it for too long a periods of time.
Now some people on established trackers are proud of the fact they have a good ratio (I am for between 1.05 and 1.2) and have done it with out free leech etc, now all of a sudden a site free leech occurs and every one can get that ratio with out as much effort and all the hard work done and time spent on torrents has been a waste of time as members that have not put the effort in can get same ratio quiet quick and this then makes them fed up so go else where.
This then results on the (lets say) less concencious members who seed for minimum time being main members who get stuff and then once seed required time is up they drop the torrent. This then also has another effect on the tracker that the torrent retention times decrease meaning the number of torrents on the site will decrease as well.

Hope that makes sense as been up nearly 23 hrs :lol:

I'm active only on a handful of trackers - established sites - and of these all offer approaches other than pure ratio systems: Free leech, share-ratio, or seeding to get GB's for a download bank, are the three main approaches.

My guess, is that it's not so much about boosting the use of the tracker to the max. Most established trackers with low user-bases tend to have a tighter community. I'm inclined to think that these alternatives are set up to ease the ratio-panic and make it a site where the ban-hammer comes out only for the really serious/stupid shit and not because someone has a poor connection, or wants to grab movies that may not be super popular, etc.

I used to leech dozens of movies at any given time. Now, I'm more selective, and grab a film now and then. I appreciate that I'm not going to risk a ban just because I favour grabbing films that may not attract a lot of seeding/leeching.

Not sure if that fits your question, but it's what came to my mind when considering your comment.

That fits my question perfectly. What is inferred from your answer is that constant freeleech places are giving people an opportunity to grab the stuff they really like, and drop the buffering part. On one side, this is a very positive outcome as it doesn't force people to download what they don't want, and reflects the true traffic that the site should have. On the other side, it also means that on many non-freeleech places, much (if not most) of the traffic is actually buffering traffic, which is a bit sad imho.

So what's the answer? Are freeleech/share-ratio sites destined to have low traffic just because they allow people to grab only the stuff they really want to? Is there a way to boost traffic on such sites while keeping the community tightknit, assuming the content is decent?

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Originally Posted by Duckater

I am not going to saying free leech is a bad thing, if it used right but some places are using it to try and encourage members to use the site and doing it for too long a periods of time.
Now some people on established trackers are proud of the fact they have a good ratio (I am for between 1.05 and 1.2) and have done it with out free leech etc, now all of a sudden a site free leech occurs and every one can get that ratio with out as much effort and all the hard work done and time spent on torrents has been a waste of time as members that have not put the effort in can get same ratio quiet quick and this then makes them fed up so go else where.
This then results on the (lets say) less concencious members who seed for minimum time being main members who get stuff and then once seed required time is up they drop the torrent. This then also has another effect on the tracker that the torrent retention times decrease meaning the number of torrents on the site will decrease as well.

Hope that makes sense as been up nearly 23 hrs :lol:

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It makes perfect sense. What you're saying is that limited freeleech times are used by people to buffer their accounts, grabbing what they can, while they can, in order to create the buffer for the other times. I'm sure that's true, but what about total freeleech trackers? How do they fit into this equation?

The conclusion I draw from your and kallie's posts is simple: traffic on many trackers is skewed up considerably, while in fact much/most of it is generated for buffering purposes.

I'm not sure who's to blame for this apparent outcome: the ratio systems that are forcing people to grab stuff they don't want or need to have an opportunity to grab what they really want, or the members who are twisting the system by buffering their accounts excessively.

I guess an option is an adopt a torrent where people get bonuses for adopting it and keeping it alive and this will help the tracker. Not sure if any one will really adopt this let alone write some code for it. Also if they have adopted a torrent and leechers on it and it is say more than a month old they can then drop off new torrents they have not seeded full with no warning etc as supporting the site to improve torrent retention.
This way they can improve ratios by getting torrents they want and keeping them alive :)
Now clearly the tracker staff would have select if a torrent is worth of being adopted as some things will never get many people after them after about a week or two :)

Just a thought that may work for some trackers

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Originally Posted by pro267

I've noticed two interesting trends developing lately:

1. There are quite a few freeleech trackers that have opened up recently.
2. The number of leechers in many freeleech trackers is usually pretty low.

Now, (my) logic dictates that making a site freeleech should increase the number of leechers, since people won't have to worry about snatching stuff that might hurt their ratios, however the trend I've noticed seems to contradict that.

I have several hypotheses as to why this is happening, however I'm interested in hearing some additional thoughts on the matter.

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What kind of trackers are we talking about? Ones with small databases? Because on bigger ones leeching has never been a problem (at least not on those I've seen). :unsure:

An already established user base is definitely needed imo. The majority of trackers the are free leech or try this route are general 0-day trackers i.e. people can get the same files everywhere.

Another problem is trackers testing the waters with an occasional free leech and believing that it's the same as a constant free leech. The tracker will get an insane amount of traffic right away which then dies down. This being because many users will try to get everything they want, but were afraid to grab before, right at the start. This isn't the trackers fault or the quality of files, the community or anything else. It's the mentality of 90% of the users.

When Waffles had their last free leech, there was a lot of talk about this exact issue. People knowing beforehand that there would likely be a 72 hour free leech, gave them the opportunity to bookmark hundreds of torrents before it even started.

Personally I don't see total free leech as a good thing, because we see it affects retention in a bad way. Lot of trackers on the other hand do a good job with the occasional free leech, with some torrents always on free leech, maybe even coupled with a seeding bonus. To name a few, where I believe, that they are doing something right. SDBits, x264, ScT and SCC. In the first two it's obviously original content, but ScT and SCC are both the general 0-day trackers, who are most likely to try free leech. I'm sure there are lots of others, where I'm not a member.

What I would love to see is one of the big music trackers employing some kind of seeding bonus or free leech slots (not like the Waffles ones, where you already would never need them, if you can afford them points-wise). That's something I believe is lacking.

At the risk of naivety is traffic what is most desired for a tracker and its staff? I've uploaded stuff before, and it matters not to me if one person catches it or 100. My feeling of gratitude received is not exponentially improved by seeds/numbers of hits. I do realize though, that this attitude is not the norm overall, as I also appreciate the effort that goes into creating and maintaining a torrent; and as a user, I do find it particularly frustrating to finally come across a hard-to-find torrent only to see the seed abandoned in short order.

My guess is that 0-day stuff will always draw the greatest action, but the moment one drifts into anything other than that - categorically - than sheer volume of users alone will still not create torrent activity. On that latter point, my uploads have always been something other than 0-day. I consider that there is no need for me to fill that niche as it's done on all trackers by those with greater b/w and speed than I. My contribution - when I upload - is to fill those obscure niches through request filling, or offering shares that are off the beaten path so to speak. In that regard,maybe what we should consider as desirable of a site is its security combined with rarity of content, than just torrent captures per se.

My thoughts anyway.

Most the sites I visit these days are due to the staff/owners and members being friendly not into 1337 0sec sites as find that the community is not as good as on the smaller sites run by people who really enjoy the fact they run a site and they spend more time chatting and helping members than on other sites that are constantly talked about here :)

Just my opnion and know poeple will say it not the way, but to me torrenting is about sharing and not just the files. Information on sites and help to members is equally as important if not more important than the content as these trackers are also usually very good at filling requests so might not get what you want a few seconds after pre but so what a few more mins going to hurt you?

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Originally Posted by Duckater

I guess an option is an adopt a torrent where people get bonuses for adopting it and keeping it alive and this will help the tracker. Not sure if any one will really adopt this let alone write some code for it. Also if they have adopted a torrent and leechers on it and it is say more than a month old they can then drop off new torrents they have not seeded full with no warning etc as supporting the site to improve torrent retention.
This way they can improve ratios by getting torrents they want and keeping them alive :)
Now clearly the tracker staff would have select if a torrent is worth of being adopted as some things will never get many people after them after about a week or two :)

Just a thought that may work for some trackers

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This happens on TVZ and I have to say its quite nice. Each user has to "adopt" two season packs and two single episodes in order to stay on the site and avoid the "adoption fee" of 1gb a night. This greatly helps to encourage seeding and increase longevity. You start with 50 gb credits off the bat, so its not hard to find what you want to adopt (I grabbed season packs of scrubs for example, without having to worry about my ratio). To encourage seeding them, "adopted" torrents come with a nice bonus that can be exchanged for upload later. Although its a little different, rather than waiting until there are seeders, you have to seed at least 8 hours a day (and you can "buffer" your hours from other days if say you can't seed one day).

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Originally Posted by kallieb

I used to leech dozens of movies at any given time. Now, I'm more selective, and grab a film now and then. I appreciate that I'm not going to risk a ban just because I favour grabbing films that may not attract a lot of seeding/leeching.

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This is exactly what I feel like is against the spirit of BT =/. Bittorrent is about downloading, and sharing what you have. How can you get interested in your files when your forced not to download what you want? The advent of ratios, while nice, has introduced a giant epeen fest of seedboxes that can make it near impossible to seed. This is why I appreciate the likes of TL instead of what.cd or any other music tracker. BCG realized this as well and has the SP system to increase peer activity.

As to the OP, I definitely has to do with the tracker, and how the freeleech is enforced. As already mentioned, freeleech doesn't work on a new tracker, and it must be through a established tracker.

On the one side there is IPT and tvt.ro. On IPT and tvt.ro, there are FAR too many FL torrents. Seeding is a breeze, and even a complete idiot could keep an amazing ratio there. IPT has a massive amount of FL torrents and on tvt.ro EVERY 720p or HD episode is freeleech. With poor hitnrun rules and far too many FL torrents, the other torrents begin to suffer.

However, on sites like SCT or SCC where seeding is near impossible in the first place on regular torrents, freeleech is a great idea. It allows people with home connections or people unwilling to RSS and buffer with every new torrent that comes out to keep a decent ratio. With this, the non seedbox users on ScT or SCC can survive and DL what they want, increasing peer activity that imo would be far more stagnant without FL. In this regard I thought FL was a great idea on BMTV, but I guess they disagreed. It would be great if someone could elaborate why they stopped it.

The only place I prefer the "1337 0sec sites" is for TV shows, and maybe some HD movies. It's isn't only about the community, but also the quality of files (FLAC and Original audio x264).

I the case of TV shows I'll even prefer a smaller site if the uploader went to the trouble of unraring it before uploading, something others should think about :)

@nightowl. Im not sure of other tv sites, but one site I recently joined (tvtorrents.org) offers that feature. Actually, two massive attractions to me: an adoption system which gives GB credits for seed hrs and an amazingly easy to build up credits, and all files are unrared. I dl and view and no unpacking necessary. It's a very nice feature, and makes it effortless. They also have no ratio at all. You have a bank of dl GB's and that's it. Activity is encouraged by the requirement that all members seed two packs and 2 episodes at all time, and to do that is a piece of cake.

I do think that trackers that move away from byte-to-byte ratio balance are actually improving the quality of the site overall, and holding onto members overall - or at least those members who don't have a seedbox and actually want to only dl the files that are of individual interest. Diversity in membership - even in a dedicated tracker, will almost always give a balance of content and seeding.

Yeah TVTorrents is decent. Personally I never download individual episodes there, but if I want a whole season of something and am not in a hurry to get it, then I grab it there ready to watch, no unpacking necessary :D It does suffer from slow speeds though.. and I mean in some cases reeeaaally slow speeds.

I am a member of a few freeleech trackers and I can say from experience that when freeleech and 0day go together it may not be the best mix. I say that because everybody on the site knows that they can grab the file and seed it for like 2 days and then dump it... but if they need it again they can always get it at TL or SCT in the future because it will be seeded there.

I think freeleech should be for sites with alot of non-0day material such as BitmeTV, Bitme, HDBits(and any HD tracker with internal groups) and finally FLAC rips on music trackers.

Freeleech should be used as a tool in order to bring in a lot of initial downloaders that will eventually become a solid number of seeders in the long run as long as the content is worth keeping on your harddrive.

The best thing a tracker could probably do is have a selection of both 0day and internal releases. All the internal releases would be freeleech and all 0day would be counted. However with the freeleech torrents you will only get upload counted up to a certain ratio or amount if under a certain threshold value. This would essentially make the site freeleech as long as you are seeding other internal torrents constantly. For example the second you finish dling a 0day release your ratio can be refilled by any data transferred by one of the freeleech torrents you are seeding.

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Originally Posted by kallieb

At the risk of naivety is traffic what is most desired for a tracker and its staff? I've uploaded stuff before, and it matters not to me if one person catches it or 100. My feeling of gratitude received is not exponentially improved by seeds/numbers of hits. I do realize though, that this attitude is not the norm overall, as I also appreciate the effort that goes into creating and maintaining a torrent; and as a user, I do find it particularly frustrating to finally come across a hard-to-find torrent only to see the seed abandoned in short order.

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There are two considerations here, both of which you've hinted about. One is the effort of the uploader, who may sometimes also be the ripper him/herself. If a person goes to all the trouble of uploading/ripping a torrent, then having 0-1 leechers may raise the "was it all worth it" thoughts, and discourage from making the effort again. That may not be the case with you, but it is for many others. Another consideration is the longevity of the torrents. If few leechers grab the torrent, then it's lifespan/recoverability in case it is sought after later on may be decreased substantially.

Increasing traffic in itself is not (or should not be) a goal in itself, however a decent amount traffic is required to achieve other, important goals, such as encouraging people to share content and keeping the content available to other members.

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Originally Posted by Zip

What kind of trackers are we talking about? Ones with small databases? Because on bigger ones leeching has never been a problem (at least not on those I've seen). :unsure:

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I was mainly referring to the smaller ones. With the larger ones, there is almost always a peer somewhere willing to grab/seed a torrent, however that does come at a price some of us are not willing to pay (security, community feel to the tracker etc).

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Originally Posted by pro267

That fits my question perfectly. What is inferred from your answer is that constant freeleech places are giving people an opportunity to grab the stuff they really like, and drop the buffering part. On one side, this is a very positive outcome as it doesn't force people to download what they don't want, and reflects the true traffic that the site should have. On the other side, it also means that on many non-freeleech places, much (if not most) of the traffic is actually buffering traffic, which is a bit sad imho.

So what's the answer? Are freeleech/share-ratio sites destined to have low traffic just because they allow people to grab only the stuff they really want to? Is there a way to boost traffic on such sites while keeping the community tightknit, assuming the content is decent?

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Interesting thread this.

The bit I highlighted in your post above possibly has quite a lot to do with the issue here, and is indeed more than a bit sad if you ask me. The ratio system as it was originally intended made a lot of sense, however in these days where it seems like every Tom, Dick and Harry has a seedbox to abuse it no longer really means anything. I remember when having a 1.05 ratio meant you were the ideal user, and only uploaders were really expected to have significantly more than that, or applauded for doing so. Those were the days *old git smiley*

So nowadays, on many ratio-based sites, especially those considered to have worth on silly levels lists or e-penis meters, it really does seem like a hell of a lot of the traffic is from people trying to build up TB buffers by downloading a ton of stuff, most of which they can surely never use/watch/listen to. On sites without ratio there is little point in them doing this, so there may well be a noticeable decrease in the overall volume of leeching going on. Those sites may well attract some users with poor home connections who will only download what they actually want to watch, but as a result speeds will probably not be the best, especially a few days after the initial upload. This may not be such a problem on specialist trackers, but on general 0-day ones, where the same content can be found on hundreds of other sites, high volume downloaders and/or those with faster connections are likely to go elsewhere.

So ultimately, I think a lot of the no-ratio sites are on a bit of a hiding to nothing. They've identified that on other sites, some users are apparently "afraid" to download things they may be unable to share back, and believe a freeleech system will be attractive to those people especially. But the more of those users they attract, the more speed and ratio-whores may get turned off as a result. And once a tracker, offering the same material as many others, becomes known for poor-retention, poor download speeds, and often perhaps quite a lot of h&r, no amount of free-leech in the world will make up for that in many people's eyes.*

I'm not sure there particularly is an answer to this, other than providing a site where the content is unique enough, the community strong enough, and the ethos focused enough on simply sharing the things you enjoy with other like minded people. Hell, that worked (and still does a bit) for some non-torrent based p2p communities (Soulseek for example) where ratio was never even thought of, so it must be possible for a torrent site.


*This is obviously not true of all non-ratio sites, but I see those as exceptions rather than the norm.

1) Most ratio-free trackers are bad. They are poorly organized, staff barely know what they are doing, and usually fall out within few months.

2) As per those who are alive, most of them lack dedicated members willing to put time on the site. By that i mean people barely upload, seed, or leech. Even when there is a decent amount of peer in a particular torrent, a huge chunk are seedboxers trying to buffer up (buffering in a no-ratio tracker makes lot sense...not). Then there are users who'll misuse the system by cutting off seeding right after 72 hours (or w/e is the requirement) and/or limiting their connection to 1 kB/s.

3) Every small "community based tracker" has same repetition of members. There is only limited torrents they can leech, divide that among several trackers they are member it turns out to be little to nothing.