I've decided to set up a tracker for all of the acclaim files, midway files, and more. I've done some reading up, but I find there's nothing like asking people with experience what they think works best.
Interested to see what people will recommend I've been meaning to try out retroshare, but probably an overkill
I highly suggest it be available only to Assembler members. For example - BakaBT uses a private tracker, there's a public DL and there's an account DL. You can download via the public side and not have to worry about share ratios, but on the private side you have to worry about it (otherwise you must seed to make it better and then you can download more). I suggest taking an account only approach (no public downloads) as it will better control potential flooding and wasted uploaded data (some may stop at 70% for example). Alternatively allow public downloading but only after X amount of seeders are present. Setting it up I can't say much, but from a user level I can say, private, then public would be a LOT better.
If you need, I can help with the technical side. Gazelle is fairly standard as web front-end, and ocelot is a good back-end choice. One issue would be implementing account sync.
Writing down some features that are probably wanted, feel free to add to: Backend: Ratio tracking IPv4+IPv6 support Dupe host tracking (torrent with same access key is shared by more than N IPs) Client whitelist? Some clients are known to mis-behave. Hit-n-run control Frontend: XenForo account sync Privilege request/approval/revoke Torrent overview, description, comments, stats etc Torrent uploading Admin management for torrents (editing, deletion, ...) Warning system for torrents that are about to die/dead? Not sure if bringing in Gazelle, which is pretty large and an attack surface at that, on its own would be preferable to writing some kind of XenForo plug-in. I don't know many tracker front-ends that aren't pretty big on their own.
(semi-?)automated system to ask for reseeds, either mailing users that finished a torrent, or notifying an admin
Just wanted to commend the decision to do this, kudos to you Assembler! Personally, I would consider GGn to have the best setup out of all the trackers I've used. Freeleech (or even Neutral leech) for six hours (or as sort of suggested above until seeders hit critical mass), then switch back to normal. That seems to work well for smaller torrents at least - not sure how it would go on something like the Acclaim archives (as one massive example!). Also I've always thought that dying torrents should automatically switch to some sort of freeleech or neutral leech with bonus internet points (or whatever kids call them these days) until they are seeded well again. Then again I've never run a tracker so I'll leave it the pros
