What.cd and Waffles ban Azureus and Deluge

Spoiler: Show

As staff on this tracker, one of our responsibilities is policing the swarms and making sure that everyone plays fair. Another related responsibility is the management of the client whitelist, to ensure that new clients are added as they're deemed safe, and old clients are removed as they're deemed irrelevant/problematic. On Monday the 22nd, we will be performing a significant set of changes to the client whitelist.

Deluge will be removed from the whitelist. After performing an analysis on our swarms, we found that over 4088 downloads, deluge downloaded, on average, 15.4% more data than the size of the torrent. As it is hard enough for users to maintain ratios already, we feel that it is a bad idea to allow deluge to make this situation worse. This change affects 1.3% of our userbase.

More importantly, all versions of azureus/vuze will be removed from the whitelist. This move is being made in conjunction with our friends over at waffles.fm. Vuze users, see below for instructions on how to easily transfer the .torrent files from Vuze to any other client.
Vuze's twilight hour started approaching when they changed their name from Azureus and began to commercialize their already bloated client. Over the years, this caused its market share to shrink considerably in favour of uTorrent, rtorrent, and transmission. Its ease of modification by cheat client developers and habit of constantly reporting very low upload speeds when no one is downloading anything cause unnecessary headaches for the staff. Additionally, the notoriety of the vuze developers for disliking and refusing to cooperate with private tracker staff has only served to worsen the situation.

Vuze's market share has shrunken to 7.1% of our userbase. We are well aware that you 7.1% are still a lot of people - however, we feel that in the long run, you and the rest of the userbase will benefit if you change to a better client.

Our client recommendations are as follows:

Windows: uTorrent 2.x and uTorrent 1.8.x. There is a certain level of controversy surrounding the 'unfairness' of uTorrent 2.0's new protocol (uTP) in the private tracker community. Failing to find evidence of this unfairness ourselves, and seeing significant benefits to the adoption of uTP, we have decided to make uTorrent 2.0 our #1 recommended client - however, be aware that you may not be able to use this client on other trackers.

Mac: uTorrent Mac 0.9.x and Transmission 1.8.x. Both clients are excellent, and transmission has a very friendly and cooperative dev team. To create torrents, you can use the CreateTorrent dashboard widget or the mktorrent command line utility.

Linux: rtorrent 0.8.x, Transmission 1.8.x, KTorrent 3.x, and uTorrent in WINE. rtorrent is WhatMan's very fast personal favourite, and all hardcore linux users should be using it. There also exist numerous frontends for it, such as ntorrent, rutorrent and wTorrent, in case you aren't up to using the console like a man.

If you use deluge or vuze, we understand that this change may be inconvenient for you. We also understand that you may feel a great deal of rage right now, due to the loss of your traditional client which has no doubt treated you with loyalty for many years. However, we implore you to think of the long term benefits for the site and staff, and yourselves - you'll be surprised at what your system can do with the RAM that vuze isn't hogging anymore.

In order to make the transition easier, we have given all users the ability to download a zip file with all of their snatches - click [download] next to the 'Snatched' stat on your profile. This also means that all users now have access to the collector - a feature to download all torrents by an artist, in a collage, or in your bookmarks.

If you use Vuze, please follow these steps to export your client's .torrent files (and thanks to sonicsnare for kindly sharing this info!):

sonicsnare wrote:
Make a new folder, select all torrents, right-click or option-click->advanced->export->torrent
All your .torrent files are duplicated whether you had them or not.

We apologize for the short term inconvenience this will cause, and thank you for your cooperation.

Source: What.cd

Spoiler: Show

Waffles and What.cd, over the course of several months, have discovered that Vuze and Deluge are primarily used by ratio cheaters. We are aware there's a handful of legitimate users, though, thus we are making this announcement. Effective Monday, both clients will be banned from both sites. You will not be banned from Waffles for using either program, but your ability to seed and leech will cease until you choose new torrent software.

For Windows, if for some reason you don't want µTorrent, we do allow the official BitTorrent client, along with the latest versions of BitComet and BitTornado. If you do choose µTorrent, we suggest using version 2.0 or later, to take advantage of uTP, which connects to peers faster, is home router friendly, and doesn't overload your system connections like other torrent clients. The downside to this is that outdated clients get lower priority when connections are made. We do suggest the authors of those clients add support for uTP to their clients.

On the Mac, we suggest Transmission or µTorrent Mac.

Finally, for linux, we suggest Transmission, rtorrent, or ktorrent.

We know that this will upset a few of you, but we must do what is best for the community as a whole.

Source: Waffles

Knowing the ins and outs of cheating myself, I can assure you banning Azureus won't deter cheating at all. I wasn't aware of Deluge misreporting download stats, but I'd assume the What.cd staff have talked to its developers rather than banning the client directly, which leads me to the following point:
Additionally, the notoriety of the vuze developers for disliking and refusing to cooperate with private tracker staff has only served to worsen the situation.

I'm not sure about that. Perhaps the Vuze team hasn't talked too much to What, but looking at the release changelogs and their wiki it is clear they have gone to some extent to make life easier to private tracker admins. One of their developers even registered on my board to discuss the excessive announcing issue when the tracker returns few peers, and fixed it in the stable release that followed.

However, as they have designed a whole tracker frontend (Gazelle) by themselves, it should be clear that the What.cd staff are experienced on the matter, which pleased me when I read this:
There is a certain level of controversy surrounding the 'unfairness' of uTorrent 2.0's new protocol (uTP) in the private tracker community. Failing to find evidence of this unfairness ourselves, and seeing significant benefits to the adoption of uTP, we have decided to make uTorrent 2.0 our #1 recommended client ...

Your thoughts?

My primary thoughts are that the Az/Vuze ban was unwarranted and cheating was an excuse for them to finally do away with the queueing system which they so hate from those clients ;)

The Deluge ban is warranted from the statistics I've seen myself.

Either way it doesn't affect me since I use uTorrent and rtorrent; however, I won't be updating to 2.0 until the dust settles a bit.

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Originally Posted by ca_aok

My primary thoughts are that the Az/Vuze ban was unwarranted and cheating was an excuse for them to finally do away with the queueing system which they so hate from those clients ;)

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:yup:

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Originally Posted by ca_aok

My primary thoughts are that the Az/Vuze ban was unwarranted and cheating was an excuse for them to finally do away with the queueing system which they so hate from those clients ;)

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Personally, I think the What and Waffles staff members are sensible enough not to fully ban a client just because its queue system makes seeding difficult at times. What.cd even has a mini-tutorial on how to "fix" those problems on their forums.

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The Deluge ban is warranted from the statistics I've seen myself.

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Can you post of PM me those stats? I'd be interested to check them out. :)

although I do not use azureus, I know it has a lot of great features!

Staff excuses used to be smarter. This is one is good for idiots. Never though I was going to let my accounts die

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Originally Posted by brightsid

Never though I was going to let my accounts die

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You're going to let your accounts at What and Waffles die? :blink:

I would certainly disagree with these client bans if I was a heavy Vuze or Deluge user, but I wouldn't deprive myself from the two best music trackers in the world...

Unless there is a really easy way to move the +1000 torrent from different trackers and HDDs I'm seeding (some of them are not always active but I start them from time to time),
yes

How about moving the ones that still need to be seeded, rather then moving all of them, then just slowly add things back over time. Don't really see a need to have 1000+ torrents seeding, seems a bit overboard unless your the only seeder...

If there was a logical excuse then I would try to change my client. In the announcement there isn't.
Personally I don't believe that you using rtorrent in console will make me feel more man like they are saying

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Originally Posted by brightsid

If there was a logical excuse then I would try to change my client. In the announcement there isn't.

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The "excuse" they're giving is that a large chunk of the cheating they deal with comes from those two clients, and so they found themselves forced to ban them.

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Personally I don't believe that you using rtorrent in console will make feel more man like they are saying

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Heh, that's subjective, yes. :P

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Originally Posted by brightsid

Personally I don't believe that you using rtorrent in console will make feel more man like they are saying

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I think that was meant as a joke bud :whistling

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Originally Posted by ca_aok

The Deluge ban is warranted from the statistics I've seen myself.

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I haven't seen them, and I've been using Deluge for the past couple years.

Kinda sucks, now I'm going to have to open a new client for one single tracker. I don't do a whole lot of downloading from What/Waffles. But this is still going to be an annoyance when I do decide to grab something.

My expression was a joke too not worse than the original. Anyway there is an immunity to inactivity rules for power user or above at what so I just keep an inactive account and if I want something I can't find anywhere else I'll use another client

This was a very poor decision made by both trackers.

They ban two vastly used clients, just as a new questionable Utorrent 2.0 is released that not all trackers agree on.
Its obvious that a decision like this should have been made after all the issues with utorrent 2.0 were cleared.
Its very clear through the announcement made that waffles has a problem with azureus. I personally think they are offended that azureus doesn't care for them, and refuses to aid them.
Whatever the case may be I think it is their site and they can ban clients as they please. Although this should have been done at a later point in time.

In addition I find what.cd anouncment to be pathetic and insulting to all azureus and deluge users. They post so little reasoning and offer no help to azureus and deluge users.
They could care less if their members leave over the favorite BT client being banned.

They certainly should have waited until uTorrent 2.0 was more universally accepted and proven before forcing people to make the switch. And they definitely should have waited for Transmission to get their acts together, though perhaps version 1.9 fixes some of the issues that have been plaguing the 1.8x series.

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Originally Posted by anon-sbi

Knowing the ins and outs of cheating myself, I can assure you banning Azureus won't deter cheating at all.

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Isn't this more about making it easier for the staff/scripts to distinguish cheaters from 'bad' clients, rather than banning the clients a cheater uses? :)

Utorrent has just got more powerful by this decision troubling times ahead when one client has this much power.
Means they can do what they want and you can do fuck all about it.
Champagne bottles have been open at UT

This doesn't affect me as I've been solely using utorrent as many other users, but it's a shame to see such a feature rich client (which is part of why it's more resource heavy I think) that was easily the #2 choice to be banned from a tracker. Eliminates a lot of choice that the user has in choosing a client of their preference.

And ExtraDry brings up a good point, if this has any sort of a domino effect it could mean bad things ahead for Azureus.

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Originally Posted by Rart

This doesn't affect me as I've been solely using utorrent as many other users, but it's a shame to see such a feature rich client (which is part of why it's more resource heavy I think) that was easily the #2 choice to be banned from a tracker. Eliminates a lot of choice that the user has in choosing a client of their preference.

And ExtraDry brings up a good point, if this has any sort of a domino effect it could mean bad things ahead for Azureus.

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The majority of Azureus use comes from public trackers, and I think the fact that they wouldn't comply with a large private tracker shows they don't care.

Its so convenient for new users to use Azureus because of their built in search options and easy queuing options. They profit off the searches done on the vuze network because its intergrated right in.
I can see clearly from a buisness aspect why they may not even want to be involved with private trackers, as it doesn't involve any of their own software/vuze network.

BitComet for instance has been blacklisted mostly everywhere but still runs with tons of supporters till this day.....
Vuze has 10x the BT client BitComet will ever have and will always be a leader in windows clients because of its simplicity and integration of all aspects of BT on the client software itself.

I also only use utorrent as I don't need any of the features offered in vuze and I prefer a more light BT client. So I don't really mind the ban, but as the old saying goes "don't put all your eggs in one basket".

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Originally Posted by t00z

Isn't this more about making it easier for the staff/scripts to distinguish cheaters from 'bad' clients, rather than banning the clients a cheater uses? :)

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One of the reasons they gave for banning Vuze is the amount of cheating coming from users running a mod of it, when that mod can spoof many other BitTorrent clients.

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Originally Posted by brightsid

Unless there is a really easy way to move the +1000 torrent from different trackers and HDDs I'm seeding (some of them are not always active but I start them from time to time),
yes

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there is actually. in utorrent. collect all .torrents in one folder.
- point the default downloading folder to your first hdd's seeding place
- copy all .torrents to a watch folder
- rehash them
- kill all non-rehashed .torrents
- restore them to another folder
- point dl folder to your second folder with your stuff
- copy all non yet rehashed torrents to watch folder again
etc etc

I moved to Vuze once utorrent "forced" the upgrade from 1.6.1 and it comes they were having callbacks and agreements with the MPAA.
I hate to think I'll have to use another client just for what.cd. It happened the same at PT and I ended up losing my account due to inactivity. :(

If what anon-sbi said is true (and obviously it is), Vuze's cheating mods can spoof any other clients. So, banning its "real" client won't solve a single bit the problem. It is just creating additional problems to the tracker.

It's a pity, as Vuze is hands down the most feature rich client of the torrent scene.

anon is not telling the whole truth.
He is talking about extreme mod but go peak into his site and you'll see them crying about losing shu mod.

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Originally Posted by nn3

He is talking about extreme mod but go peak into his site and you'll see them crying about losing shu mod.

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You need an update :lol: In the end it wasn't true that Shu would stop coding new versions, and even if it had been that wouldn't have meant much ;)

Who mentioned coding a new version?
I meant you lost Vuze so you can't use shu mode anymore.

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Originally Posted by nn3

I meant you lost Vuze so you can't use shu mode anymore.

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You must be stuck in 2008. Shu Mod is no more. :unsure:

Seems Mihai and his friends don't think like that.

Oh, so you've read SB-I's version of this thread. :lol:

The name stuck even though the mod no longer goes by it. Just like some people call the client "Azureus" even though it was renamed to "Vuze" a long time ago. :P

Anyways, people on sbi are not that cheerful :-)

Good luck though. You'll need it in future.

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Originally Posted by nn3

Anyways, people on sbi are not that cheerful :-)

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I can't speak for the rest but I try to be easy-going myself. :P

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Good luck though. You'll need it in future.

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Oops, I'm so scared :O

Wow. A blow to the vuze community - which is small, but quite vocal at times, I have found :P. Some people are gonna protest and rage, for sure...

But no matter what other tracker admins think, this is potentially a huge change in the private torrent community, and the fact that the already small vuze sizebase will likely disintegrate into nothing, combined with the issues of vuze pointed out in the what.cd announcement, will probably mean in time vuze won't even be used or accepted at ANY major private tracker - except for maybe random ones here or there. But for any trackers connected to or similar to what.cd in some way - the scale of allow/ban for vuze has certainly been tipped suddenly one way - like in his week's Lost episode...

My first thoughts about it anyway...

Hmm upon second thought, maybe it won't make huge waves - as funkin said, he doesn't use w/w that much (I don't either), so occasionally opening a second client isn't too outrageous. But yeah let's see if there's some sort of domino effect over time...:unsure:

Oh and "This move is being made in conjunction with our friends over at waffles.fm." - Always nice to read a neighbourly remark like that ;)

Oh well.. guess I can just log in once in a while, bookmark things and buy 24h free leech to download with uTorrent and then move the torrents to my music drive directly. After my points are gone, then I have like a 60GB buffer until I hit 0.5 and go on ratio watch.

Because no way in hell will I move my around 500, mainly sorted to folders, torrents over to some client, which will most likely be banned elsewhere.

And yeah I also believe it's uTorrent fanboys annoyed over the brilliant Azureus/Vuze queuing system.

I'm not on waffles but on What this was posted as a method of hopefully helping you export your torrents:

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In order to make the transition easier, we have given all users the ability to download a zip file with all of their snatches - click [download] next to the 'Snatched' stat on your profile. This also means that all users now have access to the collector - a feature to download all torrents by an artist, in a collage, or in your bookmarks.

If you use Vuze, please follow these steps to export your client's .torrent files (and thanks to sonicsnare for kindly sharing this info!):
sonicsnare wrote:
Make a new folder, select all torrents, right-click or option-click->advanced->export->torrent
All your .torrent files are duplicated whether you had them or not.

Alternatively, you may click the [Download] link next to your 'Seeding:' statistic in your profile to download all .torrent files you are currently seeding.

We apologize for the short term inconvenience this will cause, and thank you for your cooperation.

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That is torrent files.. and in case I'm wrong and it's the actual files, then where would I move +1TB of files?

It's a fucking bad decision made by staff. They gave no good alternatives. They only have alternatives.

They only care about their torrents. How about they consider the vast amount of torrents from other sites, downloaded to other locations. It would take me hours upon hours to get everything seeding again in uTorrent or any other client. I work between 8 and 14 hours a day. No way am I going to spend my weekend serving their uTorrent God-complex.

All you would have to do is set Utorrent's download directory to where vuze downloads to.

Then put the .torrent files you downloaded from the link into Utorrent, and it'll automatically start seeding them. You don't need to move anything.

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Originally Posted by dvdasacd

so occasionally opening a second client isn't too outrageous.

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It really isn't. Especially if a person only downloads an album or two here and there. And until it's actually been proven by others that Deluge reports to the tracker more than you have actually downloaded, then I'm going to stick with it. It's the client I'm happiest and most familiar with.

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Originally Posted by Rart

All you would have to do is set Utorrent's download directory to where vuze downloads to.

Then put the .torrent files you downloaded from the link into Utorrent, and it'll automatically start seeding them. You don't need to move anything.

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Ok I will spell it out for you. My files are all over the place. Music folders by date of download, music folders by music folder/Starting letter/artist/album, DVD folders, x264 folders, xvid folders, series folders, Hd folders, programs folders, documentary folders, ebook folders, upload folder etc. etc. spread out over three drives + laptop drive.

It would take ages.

I'll be waiting for ca_aok's rutorrent setup guide.
I'm still very angry with this decision. It actually means no one can detect those Vuze mods if used correctly. It's a declaration of lost war.
They may say whatever they want, but this is the real interpretation.

I'm really angry with this decision and for potentially having influence on other site's decisions to ban Vuze too.

What a load of crap.

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I'll be waiting for ca_aok's rutorrent setup guide.

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I'll be sure to stick it in the BT guides forum here when it's done :)

As for queueing, can someone explain to me why you feel it's necessary? People always seem to talk about this feature as if it's the best thing since sliced bread, whereas in reality I don't see how it's doing anything great for you or your ratio.