[tor-talk] torstatus.blutmagie.de

Roman Mamedov rm at romanrm.net
Thu Oct 18 18:51:09 UTC 2018


On Thu, 18 Oct 2018 10:26:34 +0100
Iain Learmonth <irl at torproject.org> wrote:

> On 16/10/18 13:17, George wrote:
> > While metrics. continues to be a next step, I still find myself wishing
> > for the simple birds-eye view that your Tor Status provides.
> 
> Can you provide some examples of things you can do with torstatus that
> you can't do with Tor Metrics' tools?
> 
> Perhaps they are easy to implement.

First of all, it adds a fun little competitive aspect to running a relay. In
effect it's a leaderboard of all relays ranked by bandwidth -- I like checking
out how high mine can climb, and who are the "closest competitors", with all
their funny, interesting and peculiar nicknames.

It is just the very nature of TorStatus, it is what you get right away when
loading it. Whereas with Metrics, while it does have a faint resemblance of
the same with its "top relays" display at
https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#toprelays...

  * Firstly, it's by far not the focus of that website, there it's just an
    afterthought buried deep and under a weirdly located button in "Relay
    search" of all places. Instead I would expect that to be a major or even
    the primary section under "Servers".

  * Secondly, it only lists the top 250 relays -- apparently smaller ones do
    not matter -- and defaults to displaying just 10 per page, making it
    limited and inconvenient as the "bird's eye" overview. Clearly that's not
    the use that authors had in mind.

But the more important aspect is that TorStatus feels to be basically the
place where you are given credit for running a relay. You know kind of like
ending credits in a movie. Yes even if just with a line among thousands of
other lines. But all those lines representing relays and exits are what Tor
is, and look, some of your own are now up there too! You are now a part of it.
This matters a thousand times more than a canned "thanks for running a relay"
on a mailing list.

-- 
With respect,
Roman


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