@soulstealer:
… the dl's are slow like they have never been before (avg at 15K). ...
Your download speed is not a matter of our site, only a matter between peers because we do not host any content, only the seeders have the files available.
As raphjd already pointed out, the number of seeding members has increased a lot (from ~3 seeders per leecher before rationator 2 became active to currently 8.15 seeders per leecher) as a result of our new ratio policy - I see it as advantage.
BTW: some of our members seem to think they can get some bonus for seeding > 100 files at the same time. (Or at least will get seed bonus for each file). Sorry to disappoint you, guys, you get seed bonus points only once for the seeding time, not for each seeding torrent.
Seeding > 100 torrents with an upload bandwith < 10 KB/s - you can calculate yourself how many bandwith remains (in average) for a seeding torrent this way. I call such behaviour nonsense, due to not reading the available help on our site. I'm preaching against such senseless behaviour since I was a moderator myself - currently I'm getting tired of having to tell the same things again and again despite our available help and how-to guides.
@soulstealer:
This site has lost thousands of users due to new rules.
Thousands of users due to our ability to enforce our ancient rule: don't create duplicate accounts. Thanks to the enforcement of our staff (and the invite only feature) we are now able to have a better eye on duplicate accouts. How many users try to cheat on us: on the 1st of september there were created more than 1100 accounts, at least 500 of them were duplicate accounts.
Thousands of users because of rationator? How - only if those users delete their account themselves (because they don't bother to read the note on the rationator 2 requirements posting in our forum).
I don't know of a single member which was banned because of low ratio. Not by me, not by any of the staff members. I know of a lot of members though which where banned because of ratio cheating to circumvent our ratio requirements. To say it bluntly: I'm not sorry about them.
@soulstealer:
Just look at the snatch count on each file, before rationator2 the count was in the thousands now most files are in the low hundreds.
Do you really believe that a file would be snatched more than 200,000 times with a user base of 80,000 users? I don't!
These unbelievable snatch counts result also from broken BitTorrentclients which report a "Torrent download is finished" (which counted as a snatch for that torrent) whenever you stop downloading that torrent for whichever reason. We started to fix those messages - you can see the result At least I can believe the snatch count now.
@soulstealer:
Fact: With the a shrinking user base you can not get a successful P2P community.
You think we can do that with a cheating, only leeching user base???
@soulstealer:
TBH I don't know what's they point of a torrent site if it isn't fast, might as well go back to emule with millions of users and files.
See my remarks to a "fast torrent site" at the top. If you read the FAQ and follow the link to the "Torrent FAQ" there, you would know about the facts how bittorrents work.
Hope I could clarify some of your misconceptions.