[tor-relays] Open call for proposals for improving the health of the Tor relay operator community and the Tor network

[gus]

Hello,

We accomplished a number of things in our fight against malicious relays
over the last 2 years[1]. One area we still need to focus on is
strengthening our relay operator community. We're therefore currently
collecting proposals from you or anyone else interested that could help
to impove the health of the Tor relay operator community and, thus,
provide our users a more trusted Tor network. We're accepting both new
and old proposals, and we're open to any ideas you may have.

Although there are various proposals for improving the network and the
Tor relay operator community, not all of them are being enforced at the
moment. Nevertheless, some proposals that can help on increasing trust
have been adopted by a meaningful fraction of the Tor community (e.g.
providing valid contact information).

Another great example of such proposals is the "Expectations for Relay
Operators"[2] document, where we guide relay operators to keep the Tor
community and the network safe, healthy, and sustainable. 

We'd love to hear your proposal on how to make it more difficult for
attackers to run relays while keeping it easy for good contributors to
join our network. You can share your proposals on this GitLab ticket[3]
and our tor-relays mailing list. It is worth noting that at the moment
we are only trying to map these proposals to get an overview over the
various options available. We're not in the process of approving any of
them.

If you have any experience, positive or negative, with Sybil-resistance
and online abuse mitigation projects, we welcome your opinion as well.

Since in this debate we have seen previous bad actors trying to game
this process and thus lowering the effectiveness of our defenses, the
Tor team will take all measures to stop people acting in bad faith and
enforce the Tor Code of Conduct and policies.

During the Tor Relay Operator Meetup on Saturday (March 4, 2023 -
19UTC), we will be discussing some of these proposals we've collected so
far.

Thank you,
Gus

[1] https://blog.torproject.org/malicious-relays-health-tor-network/
[2]
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/team/-/wikis/Expectations-for-Relay-Operators
[3] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/relays/-/issues/55

-- 
The Tor Project
Community Team Lead
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 833 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/attachments/20230303/736decd7/attachment.sig>