One of the biggest problems of torrenting is that there's often older files out there that are 97%+ complete but missing a small part, with a bunch of people all stuck at the same amount. Hopefully a person with the complete file eventually comes back online, but until then everyone is screwed.

Why not have a "cold storage" type of system, so that you don't have to completely remove it to get it off your list? I'd much rather have thousands of old torrents online with limited access to help fill problem spots, but not have to deal with thousands of stopped, offline files in my list that I have to put online from time to time.

It's probably way too much work for you to care about, but I think it's something that would really help the whole system overall if more older "offline" files were available.

I do not understand what you are trying to say.

If you are trying to say why don't you have a feature where a torrent can be seeding without taking a download slot and it is not complete then you can already do this.  Go to the torrent and select the parts of the torrent not to download.  When the remaining files are complete it will be counted as a seed.

If you are trying to say why don't you have a feature where it cycles through old torrents to see if they can help seed then you already have this.  Auto manage upload slots.

Maybe I'm just not using it right.

When something finishes, I usually just highlight and remove it to get it off the list.

What should I be doing instead?

I read a while back that the average life of a torrent is less than 40 days.

I would assume that most of the use of torrents is to facilitate instant gratification, seeking the latest prolefeed. Propogating new releases of Free Liberated Open Source Software also benefits greatly from torrents but I believe that is a small part of the traffic and such releases also get stale very quickly.

I typically leave torrents that are more meaningful running, patiently waiting for the return of the seed. And sometimes it does happen. Once I saw it took over 3 years for a torrent I wanted to complete.

Perhaps a better system would be to have the library locked in, even if it is in micro-seeding state. Obviously the content is still out there, on someones computer, but there is no current ability to communicate with the seeds for orphaned torrents.

Some kind of "Swarm-tending" mode. That way you can leave a hundred torrents ready to help, but without actively seeding the torrent. Just have it do a spot check every couple days on each of the torrents, look to see if the swarm is healthy enough (maybe a settable threshold, like 2 available copies total; 1 is obviously the low end), then if it's doing ok, that torrent goes back to sleep for a a few days. If it's sickly (like the always popular ".985 copies" swarm), it could start up in super or normal seeder mode, then get the swarm back into fighting shape. Get two or three peers topped off (hysteresis option - turn on when there is less than 1 available, turn on after 3 available copies or 25% of known nodes are seeds etc), then click back off with a timer to check again in a few days.

That way you aren't maintaining a strong swarm after your normal ratio when others can do the job, but you can dive in and revive torrents when you are needed most. Like Torrent Special Forces.

This is already supported.

See Settings/Transfers/General/Queuing/Auto-manage Slots for both UL and DL.

For seeding the UPload slots control

You can allocate up to 1000 slots for upload.
And also 1000 slots for download.

With Recycle unused download slots for uploads enabled, up to 2000 slots will be available for uploading. Auto-queue manager when enabled will rotate torrents in and out of standby mode periodically to test for demand. No demand, they go back to standby.

Also, you can set selected torrents to constant seed mode. They will always be online and available and do not use a designated slot from the number allocated.

If you have 1000 torrents loaded, and set 100 to constant seed mode and open 50 upload slots, tixati will rotate the 900 regular seed torrents in and out of those 50 slots.

These options are very versatile. Experiment and enjoy.

Thank You BugMagnet

Your explanation on mass reseeding was excellent.

Not sure if this applies, but if it concerns a media file, and you have >95%, VLC will play it and will skip the few frames missing.

As a follow up to this idea.  There are membership sites that allow the site to start a torrent based on need.  This feature allows the site to send a start request.  This then turns a torrent on when there is for it demand.

Does Tixati have this feature or plan to if it does not?