Soulseek becoming ineffective

Submitted by Brianaswell on Thu, 12/20/2012 - 21:33
Forums: 
Soulseek General Discussion

I've been using Soulseek for many years and have shared and downloaded many files, so I have been really dissapointed lately when the program has suddenly lost it's effectiveness for me. I'm not sure when it happened but my searches are yielding little results and my downloads are unable to get past 'remotely queued'. This is on both the original and qt. Otherwise the programs seem to be functioning well. I any tips would be appreciated and thanks for the years of happy downloading!

Submitted by sysmaster01 on Sat, 12/22/2012 - 06:30.

Wild guess: most users have switched from 'public' to 'userlist only'. So if you aren't on their userlist, you won't see any files (or just a fraction). Bummer.
;)
Another wild guess for the reason: too many greedy, unfriendly or even nasty users, freeloaders, etc. So some people started saying to themselves, "go on guys, you will face the consequences."

Submitted by uglybunz on Sun, 12/23/2012 - 12:26.

Have you maybe reset or replaced your router recently? Try running the port forwarding tests to see that your soulseek port(s) are being forwarded correctly. If not, then this can cause the issues that you're describing.

Submitted by Brianaswell on Mon, 01/28/2013 - 18:31.

Thank you both for your help, I'll give those tips a try!

Submitted by sysmaster01 on Thu, 01/31/2013 - 23:53.

There is one more. Brian, please try to GET USER INFO. What do you see? Possibly Upload slots = 0 ? That can explain it all in one go.
With public upload slots = 0 (adjustable on old version only, no longer available in the new Qt-based client!), you WILL wait forever. Literally.
Unless you message the user that you wish to download.

Many do this who share rare stuff and who only want to "trade" with you. That is, if you don't have what His/Her Majesty wants, His/Her Majesty will let you starve in his/her queue.
Funk and soul music sharers are known to make use of this.

thescarletfire's picture

Submitted by thescarletfire on Sat, 02/09/2013 - 18:50.

I don't view myself as a "majesty" but, I am List-Only now. Being someone who shares thousands of files and always sees other users leech from me while not sharing anything back, it gets a bit annoying :) - and so, yes I recently switched to List-Only to save on bandwidth and be fair for those who share back. But I know what you mean; sadly, many people out there are very snooty lol. Take the good with the bad I guess!