Nice description of the problem; especially the fish-fight analogy

Needs More Sources means that the known and reported sources have been tried and haven't responded, so another search is needed.

However, the reasons an online host hasn't responded can really vary, as you saw. Maybe it is busy, the owner cancelled an upload, the host is using a buggy implementation of the code, or in the case of a firewalled host, the intermediary relays have gone offline.

If my understanding of reading the developers remarks is correct, improved searching and getting of rare content is in the works, so I'm hoping there'll be less babysitting of rare downloads.