A proposal to try to improve torrents' performance

[roblov]

Hi. I'm currently seeding a DVD of Dire Straits in Basel. The situation in this torrent is this (according to the info on the tracker): there are two seeders (without connection problems) and seven peers (five of them with connection problems, in this case, badly configured ports.) This, as you surely know, diminishes the overall performance of the swarm.

To help improve the swarm performance, i've written a post on this torrent's thread kindly asking the people with these connection problems to solve them in order to improve the swarm performance. However, i found they hardly (if ever) log in to the tracker and, as a consequence, they don't see my post.

So, my proposal is this: allow a given seeder of a torrent to send a collective e-mail to the people he considers to be hurting the swarm perfomance by checking a box next to their user name to select their e-mail address. This has the advantage that all the people the seeder wants to communicate to, are contacted by sending one e-mail only. Besides, i guess it is quite correct to assume that these people will check their mail folder in a more frequent manner than the TTD threads from which they ared downloading shows. The drawback of this method is that not everyone wants to receive messages from other users and so some people may be unreachable.

Well, these are just some thoughts to help with this trading community. Opinions and other proposals are welcome, of course. By the way, i'm not trying to interfere with any of the mods tasks on this site. I'm just suggesting a possible way for ordinary users to help them make this a better site. :)

Greetings,

Roblov.

[U2Lynne]

We understand that this is a problem. You probably don't realize (since you aren't firewalled), but if a user is firewalled, when they log on to the site, there is a FIREWALLED (http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/faq.php?faq=bittorrent#faq_port_forwarding) right under their username in the upper right corner (where it tells you your ratio). So, we did try to address this issue and make people aware of it. It is linked (as it is in this post) to our FAQ on being firewalled and it is in red just like here.

I don't know that a mass email/PM to them would make them any wiser. Some of the firewalled peers are firewalled beyond their control (at a university, at work, etc.), so they may just get pissed at getting a PM about it. Also, I've been on sites where I get mass PMs and I, personally, dislike them.

[roblov]

We understand that this is a problem. You probably don't realize (since you aren't firewalled), but if a user is firewalled, when they log on to the site, there is a FIREWALLED (http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/faq.php?faq=bittorrent#faq_port_forwarding) right under their username in the upper right corner (where it tells you your ratio). So, we did try to address this issue and make people aware of it. It is linked (as it is in this post) to our FAQ on being firewalled and it is in red just like here.

I don't know that a mass email/PM to them would make them any wiser. Some of the firewalled peers are firewalled beyond their control (at a university, at work, etc.), so they may just get pissed at getting a PM about it. Also, I've been on sites where I get mass PMs and I, personally, dislike them.

I see your point, Lynne. I know about the "firewalled" sign under a person's username. I can't support my suggestion further since i had no way of testing it. Since you have administrative experience on this subject i guess you might be correct about people getting pissed off when they receive these PMs. I just wanted to give a suggestion.

It's just that have an upload bandwidth of 14 kB/s and would like to seed as much as i can but, in a swarm as slow as this it does not seem to help a lot. There are people grabbing ten shows at a time! And some of them are DVDs! Well, i'll hang on...

Thanks for your time and patience.

On another note: is there any chance of seeing the other side of your avatar? ;)

Thanks, seriously now.