Reputation? For my use case, I evaluate a torrent based on the number of seeders.
You mentioned that anybody can post a magnet link on any forum. Yes. But where do they get that magnet link from in the first place? I mean, obviously the person who creates the torrent has it. Is that the only way?
You mention DHT. My torrent client does that. Hm, is there a client that I can use to "search" DHT? Failing that, is there a way to dump a list of what hashes/magnet links/torrents my own client is currently hearing about?
Sorry for not just googling this, but there's an awful lot of cargo cult information about torrents out there...
You could create a DHT with all known torrents. Kademila was built basically with that in mind. The Kad network works pretty well, but it does face some problems with spam; just sorting by seeders doesn't cut it since a spammer can fake as many seeders as he'd like.
DHT is a way to discover peers who also have pieces of the same torrent you are downloading. It's an alternative to using a centralized Tracker to tell your client about who has the pieces of the file you need.
You mentioned that anybody can post a magnet link on any forum. Yes. But where do they get that magnet link from in the first place? I mean, obviously the person who creates the torrent has it. Is that the only way?
You mention DHT. My torrent client does that. Hm, is there a client that I can use to "search" DHT? Failing that, is there a way to dump a list of what hashes/magnet links/torrents my own client is currently hearing about?
Sorry for not just googling this, but there's an awful lot of cargo cult information about torrents out there...