cutting down on freeloaders (leeches)

[Foxbat]

Need to be able to lockout freeloaders. The slider in options does nothing.
Also need to be able to refuse certain programs. I have the most trouble with the French and German Bearshare apps. They almost never share any files, but delight in hogging your upload slots. Also, the chinese and japanese use filenames and character sets that appear as blocks.
Everyone has files to share. There is no reason for this. I'd like to have the option to lockout those with less than, say, 10 files showing. Peers and Ultrapeers are also guilty of this.

fox

[Lord of the Rings]

It's hard to determine whether people are sharing or not. Browsing has been proven to be not a reliable method of determining this! eg: One minute I can't browse someone or it shows zero results. 15 minutes later, the same person browsed may show 60 odd files, 20 mins later perhaps over 600. Later, zero again. Unfortunately the browse function in LW has not been updated in a very long time & was implemented a long time ago. The dynamics of the network can play a part in this. Free slots & bandwidth at a particular moment also affect this. Some clients are easier to browse than others. The later the version, the better the chances AFAIK.

Language support is up to your system I guess. On my mac, I can see both chinese & japanese files & in fact, frequently have such users uploading from me. Sometimes some characters don't show properly.

[Anonymous345]

to lockout freeloader go under
tools>options>advanced>preferencing

[Sleepless]

I wouldn't call Ultrapeers freeloaders. They are the backbone of the network.

I sometimes connect as an UltraPeer when I have bandwidth to spare but remove all my shared files when I don't want 31 KB/s more to be used. (This is the lowest upload setting for a T1)

I don't have unlimited connection and do this when running other Bandwidth consuming Apps

BTW I do normally share and when doing this I almost never download anything (1 or 2 songs at the most)

Does this in any way make me a freeloader.

I too hate Freeloaders (Leeches) and would like them gone from the network and do wish that the Slider would work, but still I don't consider an UltraPeer a freeloader unless He/She is doing some heavy downloading as well. I use torrents as well and strive to keep above the 1/1 ratio (preferably more) and when using Limewire I think I give lots more back to the network than I take from it.

[AaronWalkhouse]

So-called "freeloaders" are down to 12% from the typical 35% of gnutella's early days.
That low percentage pretty well accounts for first-timers and people who can't
share for various good reasons like they are in Dubai, Singapore or other
repressive places.

[Wally147]

I find that there are really good people on Limewire who share there files freely.

[Lord of the Rings]

Remember that the Gnutella network that LimeWire connects to is also host to many other gnutella programs. LW certainly can browse easier with FW & LW & Phex clients easier than the others. But the later the version, usually the better the chances of successful browses (excluding all other potential barriers such as traffic, bandwidth & slots available, etc.)

I did forget to answer about ultrapeers ... yes those who are such who add so much without the need for sharing although many do anyway. If you can be an ultrapeer, then that stops the fear of sharing I guess if you live in that type of environment. I certainly don't. I generally keep LW running for 3-5 days or longer. This may also depend upon apple's implementation of Java which is less than ideal. But I generally only reboot once or twice a fortnight. So if I can or could ... I'd keep LW running for much longer for sharing.