Talk:BitTorrent

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Peer review BitTorrent has had a peer review by Wikipedia editors which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.
News This page has been cited as a source by a media organization. See the 2005 press source article for details.

The citation is in: Darren Waters. "How Doctor Who spread on the net", BBC News, March 8, 2005.

News This page has been cited as a source by a media organization. See the 2005 press source article for details.

The citation is in: "BitTorrent maker sets up search", BBC News, May 27, 2005.

News This page has been cited as a source by a media organization. See the 2005 press source article for details.

The citation is in: John Cranmer. "Bound to be Gagged", Gay Times, July 17, 2005.

News This page has been cited as a source by a media organization. See the 2006 press source article for details.

The citation is in: Spencer Kelly. "BitTorrent battles over bandwidth", BBC News, April 16, 2006.


  1. /Archive 1: Feb 2004 - Dec 2005
  2. /Archive 2: Jan 2006 - Jul 2006
  3. /Archive 3: Jul 2006 - Dec 2006

Contents

[edit] Where did the Terminology paragraph disappear?

It was on December 2nd for example. Now I see this paragraph has been removed on December 13th. I know Wikipedia is not a dictionary, but some terms like 'seed', 'swarm' or 'tracker' have to be explained since a lot of other simpler ones are explained in Wikipedia. I'm sure the majority of Wikipedia readers don't know exactly what they mean. My interpretation of that rule (Wikipedia is not a dictionary)is that if you make an article, it shouldn't be just a definition of a term. In my case, those definitions helped me a lot to understand what a torrent refers to. Since those informations were very helpful, in my opinion, we must find a solution to bring them back maybe in another form. Thank you! Daniel77o 00:25, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the links to separate articles are enough, or the main one will become too long. MrFirewall 13:21, 16 January 2007 (UTC)


There was no link to another article when I wrote that comment. I hope it is now (it is not). Those very important informations (surely someone worked hard for writing that BitTorrent dictionary) just vanished.

I'm in doubt, to reinsert somewhere in this article that Terminology paragraph or to make another article, concerning the rule that Wikipedia is not a dictionary. My interpretation is that a Terminology article referring to BitTorrent is OK as it is not a definition of the article name. The reason for elimnating that paragraph was that rule, as I remember, but as I said the rule was wrongly interpreted because the definitions didn't refer to the article name. The length could be a problem but there are a lot of other longer articles. So I'll try to make my first article. If I do anything wrong please forgive me but nobody wanted to help solving this problem. Daniel77o 16:40, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ambiguous sentence in introduction

"CableLabs, the research organization of the North American cable industry, believes that BitTorrent could represent 55% of the upstream traffic on the cable company's access network."

Which company? -Pgan002 01:42, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What is a torrent?

Is a torrent the metadata file, or the file to be shared, or the process of sharing a file? The article is confusing about this:

  • "... a peer first creates a "torrent." This is a small file which contains metadata"
  • "The tracker maintains lists of the clients currently participating in the torrent" (Obviously, peers cannot participate in a file.)
  • "... BitTorrent Inc released a service that automatically creates a torrent and tracks a download based on a website object." (Apparently, the service creates a metadata file.)
  • "Such a group of peers connected to each other to share a torrent is called a swarm." (To share the payload file?)

-Pgan002 03:30, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Number one. --Ysangkok 13:21, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Technicaly speaking, it is the metadata file, but the terms is also (incorectly) used for the process of shareing. The fourth examle is IMO nor only incorrect, and should not used as such. If the above phrases are still in the text (I will check shortly) I will change them to be more correct. Martijn Hoekstra 13:39, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
After looking it trough, im correcting myself: A torrent file is a metadata file. A torrent is the payload data and its transport. I will admit that these terms are a bit cumbersome, but in everyday use 'torrent' may also mean 'torrent file', and it is usualy clear what is meant.

[edit] Other approaches

After a number of reverts and re-reverts of the windows zip system, I think it's time to settle this dispute on the talk page before it becomes a lame edit war. Can the people reverting it and re-reverting it give their reasons for it here, so this dispute can be solved? This doesn't need to escalate in a full fledged edit war. Martijn Hoekstra 18:56, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Alternative approaches

Alternative approaches refers to Azureus 2.3.0.2 as if it were an upcoming release, The current version is 2.5.0.4, this section should be updated appropriately, i.e. was the goal achieved? delayed for a future release? --XanderJ 19:18, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] BitTorrent development history

Come on! Let's see some history, when did the idea of bittorrent first come about? When was the first version released? By what time did it become immensely popular? Let's see some comparisons to other P2P programs like Kazaa. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.146.236.11 (talk) 20:22, 6 February 2007 (UTC).

[edit] NOT THE OFFICIAL BITTORRENT SITE

According to this, the above URL and the one cited in 'external links' is *not* the official site of the company, BitTorrent. Instead, it has several hallmarks of a 'fake' site (again, see the link I posted) and asks for email etc. to 'signup'.

I will be changing the 'official site' link to this, the 'real' site. Note that this one has as part of its 'press release' section the recent (and genuine) takeover of uTorrent, which I consider evidence it's genuine. And it doesn't ask for money. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 139.184.30.17 (talk) 19:05, 15 February 2007 (UTC).

Don't make a fool of yourself. The URL you linked to as being the "official site" redirects to http://www.bittorrent.com. Yurimxpxman 14:29, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
It appears the page is 'protected or semiprotected'. I wonder in what way Wikipedia is 'open' nowadays... never mind. I urge somebody deemed 'safe' enough to modify the link to do so, and stop the page redirecting interested people to a place that has them pay for what is free. 139.184.30.17 19:09, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Uh-huh. The black helicopters will be round shortly to, erm, "correct" this. Please remain calm. Chris Cunningham 15:21, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
See [1]. Bram Cohen is the creator of Bit Torrent, and so I do believe www.bittorrent.com is indeed the official website. - EndingPop 15:45, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Citation

Legal issues asks for cite re: two computers confiscated. Since the article is protected, someone else can add [2] as the citation when the protection is lifted. 58.162.2.122 09:48, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Typos

Typos! "Word of warcraft should be "world" and out=our. See section 3.5. 140.247.125.100 17:40, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Good catches. As Wikipedia allows all (even anonymous) users to edit, and since this article is not protected, there is nothing to keep you from making the changes in the article text. Happy editing. --StuffOfInterest 17:46, 12 March 2007 (UTC)


[edit] BitTorrent?

Wondering if there's any initiative underway to integrate BitTorrent distribution into Flash, eg for BitTorrent to be used to loadMovies called for from within SWFs. Doesn't seem to be, but figured I'd post a wonder here just in case. -:)Ozzyslovechild 05:47, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Are bit torrents safe?

I want to know if torrents are safe and if it will harm your computer or give you anything nasty. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.43.228.152 (talk) 15:25, 26 March 2007 (UTC).

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