Dear Dr. Loesing, I have a concern about the consensus_weight. The definition of it seems that the consensus_weight is a completely measured value by the authorities. However, from the Bandwidth Scanner Specification, if I understand correctly, it looks like a combination of observed bandwidth and the measured bandwidth. This is the description about how to calculate the consensus weight in the Bandwidth Scanner Specification, "we compute an average of the filt_bw fields over all nodes we have measured. These averages are used to produce ratios for each node by dividing the measured value for that node by the network average. These ratios are then multiplied by the most recent observed descriptor bandwidth we have available for each node, to produce a new value for the network status consensus process." If I am wrong, could you please let me know? Thank you very much! Best, Lei On Fri, Nov 21, 2014 at 12:09 PM, Karsten Loesing <karsten@torproject.org> wrote:

Dear list,

writing documentation is hard work. I'm sure you already knew that, but let me re-assure you that I now believe it, too. At least until I forget it again and carelessly start documenting something else that looks tiny and friendly and trivial to document.

Anyway, I spent the last day (felt like half a week) on rewriting the relevant text for the Tor Metrics website, and I wrote a short glossary of terms I didn't want to explain over and over.

Would people on this list mind reviewing my text and suggesting improvements?

For reference, the old text and real graphs, tables, etc. are still available here:

https://metrics.torproject.org/

The new text with sample graphs and the glossary are here, conveniently packaged into a single HTML page:

https://people.torproject.org/~karsten/volatile/metrics.html

I'd be happy for any suggestions here or off-list, either as comments, patches, or edited HTML files. Whatever works best for you works for me.

I'll update the .html file whenever I include suggestions. I hope to put the new text on the real Tor Metrics next week.

Thanks in advance, much appreciated! In fact, I'm pretty sure that all future visitors of Tor Metrics will appreciate your efforts.

All the best, Karsten _______________________________________________ tor-dev mailing list tor-dev@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-dev

Karsten Loesing:

Dear list,

Dear Karsten!

writing documentation is hard work. I'm sure you already knew that, but let me re-assure you that I now believe it, too. At least until I forget it again and carelessly start documenting something else that looks tiny and friendly and trivial to document.

Thank you for spending time on this.

Anyway, I spent the last day (felt like half a week) on rewriting the relevant text for the Tor Metrics website, and I wrote a short glossary of terms I didn't want to explain over and over.

Would people on this list mind reviewing my text and suggesting improvements?

I had a look through and I didn't make any drastic changes, just picked a few small nits. I attach a patch file for your reading pleasure. Let me know if you disagree with anything or my changes have made things even less clear. Two comments: 1. "Statistics include subsets of relays or bridges by...country code (only relays and only until February 2013)..." Do you mean here "from the beginning of time until Feb '13" or "from present day back as far as Feb '13"? I guess it would be clear from context, but I understood the former; if the latter is meant then maybe "as far back as" instead of "until". 2. You might include a definition of "consensus", since although it is a technical term, it is not intuitive and comes up a few times in the rest of the text. I haven't put it in the document in order to preserve the line count but maybe it could go like this, if you wanted it: <a name="consensus"></a><p><b><a href="#consensus">consensus:</a></b> a single document compiled and voted on by the <a href="#directory-authority">directory authorities</a> once per hour, ensuring that all <a href="#client">clients</a> have the same information about the <a href="#relay">relays</a> that make up the Tor network. with a link to the same entry where "consensus" appears elsewhere. That's it.

Thanks in advance, much appreciated! In fact, I'm pretty sure that all future visitors of Tor Metrics will appreciate your efforts.

Thanks for writing the documentation!