I was just wondering, does going no ratio really work, not just in theory? Almost every site that I've seen that went no ratio seems to have been LOSING peers. Just look at SceneRace or the site Scene"live" (not the original ScL). They have both reverted back to ratio systems after "excessive hit'n'runs". Wait a second - weren't minimum seed times introduced to DECREASE hit'n'runs? On GFT, another popular tracker, although I have to agree that they have some great pretimes, and that the speeds on their 0day torrents definitely can max out connections with the numerous seedboxes on the site, even the staff have admitted that the tracker is more 0day oriented - and isn't as effective in archives or older content. PTM seems to have done something right - they have a decent amount of peers - but is it really a lot compared to how many total users they have? And even if it is - it isn't technically "no ratio" as you can seed to .6/.75 (forgot which one) and then just leave the torrent. This doesn't really "keep" in the spirit of using a no ratio system as an means of preventing hit'n'runs, as you can just leave the torrent soon after. I can't really comment on FTN, the original pioneer of the "ratio free system", as I don't have any experience with it, but from the screens I've seen there seemed to be many 1 seeder 0 leecher torrents as well. There's also the "curse" of no-ratio music sites as well. Almost every single no ratio music site (with the exception of SQN and CE, which are very new and could very well fail later) has managed to collapse. What.cd and waffles, two of the most successful music trackers, have flourished with activity even though it is one of the hardest sites to seed at.
Then there's the problem of limiting upload as well. Anyone can survive on these sites with little to no upload at all, as long as they seed. What's to stop someone from limiting all their torrents to 1kbps upload while they use their upload bandwidth at the ratio sites they have? How do you prevent this from putting a screeching halt on activity as torrents end up becoming slower and slower?
One possible explanation is lack of users. Most no ratio sites these days seem to lack the users necessary to really generate activity. Although some of the bigger name sites, such as GFT or FTN, seem to be lacking activity on older or unknown torrents as well, but in all respects still have small userbases as well.
Could a no ratio site with a larger userbase truly work, and hold its own against some of the more known ratio sites?
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