[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Babysitting_Co-op
edit: just explaining terms for non site members, but you're right, definitely something you need to get right. Too strict and the economy dies, too permissive and there isn't incentive.
They changed it to allow your ratio to dip well below the "required" ratio as long as you kept seeding. Keeping your ratio up wasn't strictly necessary anymore - though it was still required to keep your "rank" and the little perks that came with that. The admins did this largely in response to their inability to "fix" the ratio economy that overly disadvantaged people with low bandwidth.
Broadcasthenet still has no ratio requirements at all and is doing fine.
Their servers were raided by the French authorities.
Again, what is the point of a torrent site that punishes you for actually using it, even if you are fully willing to contribute via seeding, or albums, etc.
As a heavy user for years, sorry, the what.cd system was fundamentally broken if you didn't have a fast seed-box to slurp up ratio fron everyone else. Because its zero sum, the seedboxes win, and everyone else loses. Which is totally insane when bits are 100% free things that can be copied endlessly, isn't that the whole point of BitTorrent to begin with?!
You have to give a lot more than you take - and yes, seedboxes are doing more than you in the "giving" aspect.
Are they? Surely after a certain point, adding more bandwidth to the network doesn't make a difference. If you add another fast seedbox, maybe some people could download an album 5 seconds faster, but that's only if they could pay the ratio for the album in the first place, which they might not be able to if they weren't a seedbox user themselves. I think what.cd had more than enough seedboxes and that it probably would have been more important to the community to upload new 100% FLAC rips or seed unpopular or poorly seeded torrents than to add another seedbox that just auto-snatched popular/2016 releases and freeleech torrents.
> I was an Elite member (100GB+ upload), without any seedbox, within 2 weeks.
Remember, not everyone has a good enough home internet connection to do this. Back-of-the-napkin calculations say, even if I spent the whole time uploading at full speed, my shitty 0.5 Mb/s connection would still take more than 2 weeks to upload 100GB.
last time i checked 100GB of storage with 1-2TB caps at 1GB in and out was close to $5 month
You can pay in bitcoin if you're concerned about "privacy" but they all take paypal.
What use is a glorious library if you have to work there for free a few days a week before they let you read any of the books?
Fill a request whenever you need more upload. There are many low hanging fruits for 25-75GB and $15-35. Requests are "high value" uploads that don't rely on you seeding to multiple people, just uploading and claiming the reward. Very low effort and sometimes the requester even links you to where you can purchase the material.
Requested uploads hold more value to the community (or at least a single member) than {random local band that had two shows and gave out poorly mixed CD's one time}.
It was hard to maintain content long enough to seed if you want to consume content but don't have much disk space. And with just a laptop it can be hard to keep an internet connection to seed.
Eventually it became more effort than it was worth and I just used the top charts to find the music elsewhere. tbh I haven't since found a better source for high quality music recommendations.
What.cd's ratio model was zero sum, so in order for you to get ratio, somebody else has to lose it. In Economic terms that means the entire "ratio economy" freezes up and its very hard to do much of anything.
It was a continual, deep flaw with the site that admins refused to acknowledge, i hope any successors keep it in mind.
Getting punished for actually using the site and seeding makes no sense whatsoever.