[tor-talk] is it me or did tor talk get really quiet?

Joe Btfsplk joebtfsplk at gmx.com
Thu Sep 29 20:06:03 UTC 2016


Thanks Moritz.  Most of that sounds good, but seems to leave the quality 
tech support issue in limbo (not your personal responsibility).
I'm not being rude & hope I'm not beating a dead horse - just asking, 
what's the hold up on such an obvious need, that (apparently) requires 
relatively little, or else one man operations would never be able to do it.

Upshot:  I don't know why major software project, communicating on a 
world wide network wouldn't have a company run support forum.
Manned by company employees or their appointees.

I may be stating what many users are thinking.  I think many potential 
Tor users fear or distrust what they don't fully understand.  Which 
would seem to slow the increase of users.  Tor Project says it needs to 
increase users, right?

If that forum is to be stackexchange, shouldn't there should be project  
reps / mods - sometimes, qualified to answer many questions, or have 
tools to find answers?
Many small projects provide excellent support (I use them all the time), 
on a fraction of Tor Project's resources.  They often give precise, 
detailed answers in < 24 hrs.
They usually don't answer, "Not sure.  Good luck."  Some years back, I 
contacted the Tor help desk, which told me to post on stack exchange.  
It got no helpful answers, when I was sure one existed. That was long 
ago, but typical users generally don't like that. Many walk away if they 
can't get help quickly.  Or lose their freedom if using Tor incorrectly 
in some countries.

Maybe Tor Project sees the value of a well run support forum, but never 
act.  Tor-talk or any mailing list may never provide the best support 
for Tor users.  Mailing lists aren't worthless, but lot's of users find 
long, technical discussions hard to follow on them - even w/ 
"conversation or thread view."

Partly, because users reply in different "formats."  Sometimes not 
quoting enough, for full context (then you have to find / read prior 
emails?);  sometimes forwarding far too many replies - repeatedly. 
Sometimes a true pain to find earlier details.  Sometimes they top / 
bottom post, or insert inline.  Some mail clients don't display other 
clients' formatting correctly.

Forum software puts everything in order & makes it easy(ier) to find & 
refer to full, previous comments - even link them.  You just scroll down 
the entire conversation.  Better search, easier to quote, insert images, 
code, etc.  Maybe a Tor operated forum would allow including a few, 
small, unintrusive ads - or not (not from Google, etc.).  For donations, 
sale of T-shirts - "I hacked the NSA & all I got was this lousy 
T-shirt," Alien hats, caps that look like aluminum foil??  Maybe most 
users wouldn't mind, so long as ads didn't come from trackers.

Kind of touchy subject - maybe conduct a survey.  Some might not mind 
small pay for click ads, when using TBB, if it generated enough revenue 
to matter - it may not.  I believe? some Tor leaders have said the 
current funding model needs to change?  There are only so many ways to 
do that.  It has to start somewhere, or nothing ever changes.  I'm not 
the 1st to say, a large % of potential users will never trust anonymity 
software largely funded by any government agency.  That's no secret to 
Tor Project.   Just a thought.


On 9/28/2016 11:46 PM, Moritz Bartl wrote:
> Hi Joe,
>
> I agree with what you wrote. The topic comes up at every dev meeting,
> but we have not found a way to address that problem, or, phrased
> differently, it is unclear what path to take.
>
> On 09/28/2016 08:28 PM, Joe Btfsplk wrote:
>> For a *technical support list,* why not moderate tor-talk?  To keep
>> peace, but also provide qualified support?  There's nothing preventing
>> making changes.
> Personally, I believe a mailinglist is a poor tool for support questions
> (and answers). Some of the problems are: Archives are a pain to search,
> older posts are a pain to reference, most people want a questions
> answered and get freaked out if they get a flood of messages that are
> not relevant to their current question, etc.
>
> That's one of the reasons why Tor created https://tor.stackexchange.com/
> . I'm not saying it is the perfect answer, far from it, but I think it's
> a fine platform and it could use a way larger number of people answering
> questions (a problem any other platform will have, too). Also, I've been
> advocating for a "support portal" for years, and there seems to be some
> traction now to finally get one online. I don't know what it will look
> like, but at least from the "technical support" side of things, it will
> help a lot more users than those who are comfortable using mailing lists
> these days. I'm not saying I like that, I do embrace mailing lists, but
> I accept that most of Tor's users hate them or at least don't understand
> them well enough.
>
> That being said, tor-talk is now moderated, sort of. A few annoying
> fellows were asked to find some other forum for their rants. I also try
> and tell people within Tor that unless _they_ come back and use this
> list as a forum for their conversations, we cannot expect it to become
> better. The other chance is for all the people who still follow this
> list to use it more and try and answer questions that come up or
> politely point to relevant resources, even if it does not immediately
> bring back "the hardcore Tor experts".
>
>> _Polite, sincere_ suggestions for features or policies changes are often
>> necessary.  Many forums allow that.  I've made polite, critical
>> suggestions on many forums, that lead to change - though sometimes
>> initially got criticism.  A few got snarky, initial comments from the
>> devs, until the reasoning was clarified or they thought it over.  Then
>> some showed up on change lists.   Very different from ranting.
> I think this is happening here as well. Even if people might be too busy
> to reply, more Tor people than you think still at least read it, and
> more often than not pick up things from here to other Tor people.
>
>> It seems that's what's happened to Tor users.  For most software or
>> hardware, if users can't get timely support, the user base may decline.
>> Even one man, open source projects often have active, moderated tech
>> support forums.
> I totally agree, and this is being worked on. I wished this list would
> be used by more Tor folks, and the plans and ideas for improving support
> channels could easily have happened here, but I also acknowledge that we
> have quite a number of new(-generation?) Tor folks who are not into
> mailing lists (or IRC!). Crazy, I know, but that's how it is. :-)
>



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