Hello list,
in my monthly status report [0] I mentioned that some PT-related parts of the website are in need of improvement. As a response, a few people sent me a private email asking me what kind of improvements I was thinking about. Instead of replying individually, I decided to send a mail to this list.
Here are some of the needed improvements:
- In the past, our main PT page was the obfsproxy page: https://www.torproject.org/projects/obfsproxy.html.en
However, now that the scene is growing and the obfsproxy fad is shrinking, the main PT page should actually be: https://www.torproject.org/docs/pluggable-transports.html.en .
Users, bridge sysadmins and researchers who want to learn about PTs will probably encounter that page. I suggest we optimize that page towards users and bridge syadmins and let researchers get their information from the "unofficial" wiki page: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/PluggableTransports
- To make the PT page a bit more end-user-friendly, we could remove non-Tor-deployed PTs from the list, like Stegotorus, Skypemorph and Dust. These are better suited for the wiki, I think. Things that users see in the PT page should be ready to use.
Also, it would be great if there was a "How to use PTs" document linked by the "Download PT bundles" section. Unfortunately, I don't think there is such a document atm. Sheried wanted to write one (with screenshots etc.) but I'm not sure if it was ever made.
- To make the PT page a bit more bridge-sysadmin friendly, we could link to a "How to become an obfsbridge" document. Currently, the only such document is linked from the obfsproxy page: https://www.torproject.org/projects/obfsproxy.html.en#instructions and it only suggests installing obfsproxy.
Nowadays, such a guide should also be guiding readers to install fteproxy. And Real Soon Now it will need to be guiding readers to install Yawning's obfs4proxy or gobfsproxy.
Also, weasel read the guide and was not very happy. For example, the guide _suggests_ using pip as root, this is probably not sound advice and some workaround should be found.
- Another document that is needed for bridge sysadmins is a "Best practices for running obfsbridges" document.
Such a document could have the following advices: - Which PTs should be installed. - How to install ExtORPort and geoip. - How to find geoip stats from your bridge. - How to check whether your bridge and PTs are used. - How to enable logging in your PTs and general debugging tips. - etc.
There are probably other improvements that could be suggested, but this is a good start, I think.
Also, those tasks don't have any tickets at the moment. Please feel welcome to make tickets if you'd like, or I can do it at a later time :)
BTW, I don't know much about UI or product marketing (#11501), so my advices might be totally off :)
[0]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2014-August/000608.html