User:Leuk he/hideos

Hide Overshares
This is a feature designed to balance the upload of chunks within a file. It is especially useful for releasers who wish to spread the file in as few uploads as possible, but it could be useful for any responsible uploader.

It works by hiding chunks, which were uploaded significantly more than other chunks, from downloaders. This causes downloaders to request other, less shared, chunks. If all chunks were uploaded equally, all chunks are shared. The exact number of uploads which qualify as "significantly more" is selected by the uploader.

For example, a releaser may choose to set overshares to 2. Then, if one of the chunks is fully uploaded twice, it is hidden from the people downloading the file. Once the remaining chunks are fully uploaded at least once, the chunk is shown again. If that chunk is uploaded once more, than it is once again upload 2 times more than the remaining chunks, and it is once again hidden.

If overshares are set to 1, each chunk will only be uploaded once until the file is completely uploaded, and then the process restarts.

Note that the measure of whether a chunk is overshared is done compared to the least uploaded chunk. This means, on one hand, that an overshared chunk does not remain permanently hidden, but becomes visible again once the rest of the file is uploaded. On the other hand, it means that if a file is only partially uploaded, it is not enough to make an overshared chunk visible, since the file has to be fully uploaded.

Newer implementations of the feature ignore chunks which cannot be uploaded when looking for the least shared chunk. These include unavailable chunks from a part-file, and chunks the downloading clients already has. This is to ensure at least one chunk which can actually be uploaded would be visible. It simply preserves balance within the part of the file that can be uploaded, while allowing that part to become unbalanced compared to the part which cannot be uploaded.

The actual measurement of how many times a chunk was uploaded is based on the spread bars information, so this feature cannot exist without spread bars.

This feature was originally created by SlugFiller.

Selective Chunk Sharing
This strengthened version of Hide Overshares reveals only a single chunk to the user. When more than one chunk is sharable, a random chunk is chosen to be shown to the user.

It also ensures that each user is shown a different chunk, as possible, and when a chunk must be shown twice, the least-shared chunks get first priority.

This makes sure users are forced to download various parts of the file, so the end result is the file becoming shared in a balanced manner. It is more pre-emptive compared to standard Hide Overshares, since Hide Overshares only ensures balance after the file is uploaded partially, while Selective Chunk Sharing makes sure that the file is downloaded in a balanced manner from the start.

Like Hide Overshares, it ensures the revealed chunk can be uploaded to the downloading client.