[tor-relays] What's a "useful" relay?

[Rana]

@teor
I hereby volunteer to maintain a FAQ for operators of small relays (or noob
operators). Which means I would be watching this list, generating the Q&A
and from time to time alerting this list to the appearance of new questions
and answers, to allow knowledgeable people to do quality control. And/or
inviting people to convert their answers on this list  to the FAQ answers.
This would relieve them from answering the same question over and over again
and reduce the influx of questions from noobs (like myself :)). I believe
this would also strengthen the community and reduce the frustration of small
relay operators  and - who knows? - even lead to advancements in Tor design
to make better use of them.
 
Caveat: I need someone (Tor project people) to create the Wiki on the site
and let me admin it. There is already a severely underused wiki with a
couple of answers that someone once referred me to, with a disastrously
difficult captcha that I could not pass (why have captcha on a Wiki in the
first place is beyond me)
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: tor-relays [mailto:tor-relays-bounces at lists.torproject.org] On Behalf
Of teor
Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2017 8:26 AM
To: tor-relays at lists.torproject.org
Subject: Re: [tor-relays] What's a "useful" relay?
 
 
> On 24 Dec 2016, at 18:56, Rana < <mailto:ranaventures at gmail.com>
ranaventures at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> ...
> 
> What is needed is a standardized feedback on WHY the relay has such a low
rating. This could cause at least part of the operators to take care of the
bottleneck (eg moving the relay to another location, or abandoning the home
relay and replacing it with a hosted one). And if the home relay is indeed
as harmful as some people here think, the recommendation should be issued to
shut it down, instead of leaving it hanging there doing nothing or even
harming Tor. Such feedback could significantly improve the quality and
effectiveness of Tor.
> 
> Based on the discussion here, the people who run Dirauths and bwauths know
very well (or at least can easily find out) the reasons for relays getting
low rating - why not automate the  communication of the reasons to relay
operators in clear, unequivocal and actionable terms?
 
You could try compiling a FAQ from the answers you and others have received.
 
Or, someone could volunteer to create a relay performance analysis tool. But
it might not be as simple as you think. There are many variables, and it's
hard to work out what's actually happening to a relay without access to the
relay itself.
 
> I get the feeling that people are trying to be "politically correct" here
and it's a pity (although they DO respond fully and frankly when asked a
direct question).
 
Perhaps some of us struggle to answer similar questions in the same level of
detail all the time. I know I do. It takes a lot of time to elicit the level
of detail needed to provide good answers.
 
Also when we're not polite, the discussion escalates into long threads with
few interesting posts. So most of us learn to avoid that.
 
T
 
--
Tim Wilson-Brown (teor)
 
teor2345 at gmail dot com
PGP C855 6CED 5D90 A0C5 29F6 4D43 450C BA7F 968F 094B
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xmpp: teor at torproject dot org
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