Leeches, ultrapeers, chat rooms

[darbea]

My question is multifaceted here, so I'll try to stay on track and be clear:

Sometimes when I sign in, I am assigned as an ultrapeer, which I don't mind at all. However, a few things materialized as I started, over the past few months, to scrutinize those who were downloading my files (whether as an ultrapeer or a leaf).

As a leaf, I'll look at everybody coming in and check to see if I can browse them. When I find those who don't, I kill their download from me. I didn't do this when I first started, but content selection has gotten slim at times (probably because I have benefitted from a plethora of content I was offered here.downloading the past 2 years or so. Even when I first joined, I opened some folders up for the pickins. Even though I'm not the 'chatroom' type, I always enabled chat, just in case. At first I was pretty liberal in my leecher option setting. But that has slowly evolved into an outright ban (from me) on them.

As an ultrapeer, it seems to be magnified, but then again I have a few score people coming thru me. And I accept the fact that as an ultrapeer, my own throughput suffers. I run much faster as a leaf. But that's ok. An advantage of being an ultrapeer, is that I have a huge selection of people that I can browse. Or so I thought. It seems the vast majority of users disable chat and browsing them. Some (a minority) do it because they think they can be hacked - which of course, hasn't happened that I know of. All my shared files and downloads are external - no pointing anywhere near system drives. \

As an ultrapeer, I feel some kind of responsibility to the leaves, and I am hard pressed to kick them off. As a result, I limit my time being an ultrapeer, which is not fair to everybody. Also, as an ultrapeer I can't seem to find a way to chat with the others. Can't find the icon. I try to warn people, thru chat, if it is enabled, that if they don't share with me, or if they just offer bull#$%$ files, ie EULAs, user instruction docs, orphan dlls, and the like, that I'll boot them. At least they get a warning. As an ultrapeer, I can't make contact with them. And then I feel like I've been taken advantage of.

When I can boot somebody, they come right back... I know I can write down their ip go into the filters and block them, but why can't they be banned for at least the session, when I kick them out? Many times I can't seem to keep up with them, because with 10-15 people connected while I'm a leaf, I would have to dedicate my entire attention just chasing these people out. Why can't that 'kick' button offer some values?

As an ultrapeer, why is chat disabled? (or if it isn't, I'm sorry - I haven't been able to find it)

Am I wrong with the position I have taken? Is there a better way for me to handle this?

\