I agree keeping the process automagically performed is better for new users.
Absolutely. Using a torrent at all is a hack and a (small) barrier to entry that should be removed if possible.
But if using a torrent is the current plan I can throw bandwidth at it.
There seem to be more downloaders than seeders on the new torrent right now. After changing torrents I'm downloading at 0kB/s and uploading at 1 MB/s.
If you already have the blockchain you should generate the file using the auxiliary script linearize.py instead of downloading it through the torrent (it is faster than downloading it and doesn't hurt the ones already seeding it, leaving bandwith for the ones who really need to download it).
Despite of that, it is good to have more seeders indeed.
Thanks,
Adriano