Rant about ratio

Hello,

so I noticed that if you want to get into a tracker you have to prove that you can keep a ratio of 1:1 or more. Usually by taking screenshots of your profile page on other trackers.

Leaving aside that screenshots can be easily faked by just editing the html code in the browser development tools, I find this requirement ridiculous.

On most private trackers keeping a ratio above 0.5 is extremely hard because everyone is a seeder nowadays and nobody leeches!
For example, I have a torrent downloaded over a year ago on TT and it's barely at 0.7 ratio, and my PC is on almost 24/24. Unless you download torrents immediately after they are posted, it's almost impossible to get a 1:1 ratio on them. And sitting on the computer all the time and pressing F5 every 10 seconds is not really an option.

Tracker owners apparently understood this issue. This is why they dropped the minimum ratio to 0.15 - 0.5. Well, at least some of them, like Waffles and TranceTraffic. But those who hand out invites have not, and still ask proofs of unrealistic ratio.

What are your opinions on this?
I think tracker owners should not punish people for inviting bad leeches. Perhaps some of them don't, but they should make this statement clear somewhere on the site. Banning the leech and the inviter loosing his invite is enough. By also punishing the inviter they encourage this stupid ratio proof thing.

PS: I'm not in the position of having low ratios anywhere, mainly because I'm "privileged" to live in a country with very fast Internet and because I afford to keep the computer on all the time. But not everyone can

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kat88

Leaving aside that screenshots can be easily faked by just editing the html code in the browser development tools, I find this requirement ridiculous.

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You will find most of the recruiters have a whole host of trackers that they are members of. So if they go on and check your profile and see that your stats have been faked, this will obviously lead to you not receiving an invite but there may be further repercussions with your registration on that site

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kat88

On most private trackers keeping a ratio above 0.5 is extremely hard because everyone is a seeder nowadays and nobody leeches!
For example, I have a torrent downloaded over a year ago on TT and it's barely at 0.7 ratio, and my PC is on almost 24/24. Unless you download torrents immediately after they are posted, it's almost impossible to get a 1:1 ratio on them. And sitting on the computer all the time and pressing F5 every 10 seconds is not really an option.

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I agree with you on some trackers it is nearly impossible to get a 1:1 ratio on each torrent. But I think that's why a lot of trackers are going ratioless and others are providing options to maintain ratio such as freeleech and bonus points. I think this should be a requirement on all trackers, as the onus should not be on the user to reach a 1:1 ratio, but to ensure they are seeding for a minimum amount of time and avoiding hit & runs.

I will say on some of the most difficult trackers to maintain ratio, a seedbox set up with RSS or autodl-irssi is almost a necessity unfortunately.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kat88

I think tracker owners should not punish people for inviting bad leeches. Perhaps some of them don't, but they should make this statement clear somewhere on the site. Banning the leech and the inviter loosing his invite is enough. By also punishing the inviter they encourage this stupid ratio proof thing.

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Why should trackers not punish you for inviting bad users? Trackers don't have to give out invites, but when they do, you are responsible for choosing people that will contribute to the community. Also, trackers will not ban you immediately for inviting one bad user. They will give you a warning, and only when they can tell that you have a systematic problem with the people you invite, will they consider punishing you. But even then, they will probably only revoke your invite privileges. I think its important that trackers have a disciplinary system in place because it incentivizes users to make sure they do their due diligence when inviting others. Otherwise you'll see invites flying around all over the place, and it is the tracker that suffers because of the larger proportion of bad users.

I'm not lucky enough to have a fast home connection :P, but that's why I invested in a seedbox. I understand this isn't attainable for everyone, so it is right that trackers are lowering their requirements or going ratioless, and at the very least providing other means of building ratio. The ones that fail to do either will die a slow and painful death.

On recruiters, I have no idea what they look for but I hope that ratio isn't the only requirement. If I were a recruiter, I'd invite the guy who seeds 24/7 on his home connection, has a few uploads to his name and has a genuine interest in the tracker being offered, over the guy who has a seedbox and just downloads freeleech torrents to build his ratio and is only interested in amassing a collection of trackers.

Go for ratioless trackers?

I hate seedboxes. Yesterday I uploaded a 60 MB torrent on waffles, and I barely hit the OK button to start seeding and 2 "people" already downloaded it with something like 6 MB/s and started seeding it as well. It too like 5 seconds. wtf...

Yeah that happens, sometimes I add a torrent and if I blink I'll miss it hit 100%.

It would be a good idea if trackers could implement a system where people with seedboxes have a cap and once they hit that cap they can no longer seed. Cinemageddon does this with some of their torrents when you reach a 6.0 ratio.

HDbits.org does it a bit differently by only giving freeleech benefits to people downloading off their home connection. For example, if you were to download a freeleech torrent with a seedbox, it would record the download stats normally.

So I believe trackers realise that seedboxes have an unfair advantage compared to home connections, and they are doing their best to even the playing field and prevent ratio whoring.