Unreliable ratio bug

[VulcanTourist]

I'll let this screen capture do the talking; notice the file size, amount uploaded, and then the alleged ratio:

Something is seriously off-kilter when this can happen. How are we to trust any given ratio, much less our own share ratio or anyone else's, when this can occur?

I will gladly respond to requests for specific relevant information. I frankly don't know what actually is relevant at this point, beyond that screen capture (but I know much of what isn't).

[DreadWingKnight]

General tab.

Transfer Section

Downloaded and uploaded amounts.

[VulcanTourist]

Ah... interesting:

Downloaded: 48kB

Uploaded: 664MB (current)

How did it get confused about the actual amount downloaded? It knows the file size is 518MB, it knows the download was completed, so how does it then decide that only 48kB of a 518MB file that is now present was actually downloaded?

[DreadWingKnight]

You re-added the torrent and the last piece (totalling 48kb) was re-downloaded because of files being missing or corrupt.

[VulcanTourist]

I don't quite understand your explanation. I don't recall "re-adding" the torrent, and I'm not sure I know how to do that. Why would that be desirable or necessary? Is it easy to do it by accident?

In any case, how can the current state of affairs be corrected? Is it possible to force a reassessment of sorts? What is the effect of this on my share ratio? When I first noticed the bizarre ratio I disabled the seeding and left it disabled for quite a while , fearing it might adversely affect my ratio or something else.

[DreadWingKnight]

It's pure display. And ultimately, overall ratios aren't going to affect your download speeds.

[VulcanTourist]

So it has no effect on my share ratio at all? I wasn't concerned about an effect on my download speed; I was concerned that it would affect the accurate reporting or recording of my share ratio. I always want accurate confirmation that I'm hitting the share ratio (1000%, 10x) that I specify, and I was worried that this would be skewing the ratio incorrectly in my favor and making me an unintentional cheater.

Can you confirm that it has no effect at all on share ratio?

[DreadWingKnight]

Ratios are not a part of bittorrent design.

http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/User:The8472/Private_trackers

[VulcanTourist]

I don't use private trackers; I think they pervert the intent of the system. I keep a high share ratio because I'm concerned about the reality of less popular or dated torrents that might lose all seeders. I've seen this happen, so I feel compelled to try to help ensure overlap; at least one other person has to get 100% of the file and then seed it in turn for long enough that another person gets and seeds it, or things fall apart. It's unfortunate that originators can't or don't always maintain the original seed. I hate to see a download that I value become unavailable to anyone else later after I'm lucky enough to get it.

While I might like to be a permanent seeder for everything I download, that isn't practical from a storage point of view! I'd have to keep all the original unmodified files in addition to the decompressed or renamed ones that I actually keep for my own use. I don't have enough storage - or uplink bandwidth - to be able to do that, so I compromise and set myself that 1000% goal. (I'm finding it hard to do because of the huge difference between my up- and downlink bandwidth... requires a lot of self-control on my part.)

[Ultima]

Trackers calculate ratios based on upload/download amounts anyway. Trackers aren't given an actual ratio by the client, but the amount uploaded and the last amount downloaded since the last tracker announce (which the tracker accumulates). So even if you happened to have downloaded 48KiB, that won't really affect your ratio anyhow.

The global ratio in Help > "Show statistics" works in exactly the same way -- it accumulates the total amount uploaded and the total amount downloaded.