Hi,
Last Saturday, during the Tor Relay Operator meetup, I briefly talked
about the meta proposal that defines the process of submitting proposals
to the relay operator community.
The document is open for community feedback, and you can comment
directly on the ticket:
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/policies/-/issues/2.
I'm also sharing the full text below.
Gus
```
Filename: 001-community-relay-operator-process.md
Title: Process for new policies and proposals for the Tor relay operator
community
Author: gus - g...@torproject.org
Created: 2023-05-22
Status: Meta
## Overview
This document outlines the process for submitting policies to the Tor
relay operator community, explains how proposals are approved, and
clarifies the relationship between Tor Community proposals and the Tor
Project. This is an informational document.
## Motivation
In the past, our approach to organizing the Tor relay operator community
was highly informal and relied heavily on the informal dynamics between
relay operators, Directory Authorities, and The Tor Project staff.
Through discussions and interactions in meetups and similar events,
operators would collaboratively determine the best practices for
managing Tor relays while ensuring the well-being of Tor users. However,
as the Tor Community expands and its members become less interconnected,
there is now a necessity to establish a well-defined process for
presenting and evaluating proposals and policies to the relay operator
community.
It's important to note that these proposals are distinct from the Tor
proposals governed by torspec. The proposals in tor spec primarily focus
on technical specifications and protocols at the core of the Tor
network. They cover areas such as the Tor protocol, directory
authorities, circuit construction, and encryption mechanisms.
The proposals in this document, on the other hand, are specifically
tailored to the relay operator community and address operational,
policy, and community-related aspects. While both types of proposals aim
to improve the Tor network, they serve different purposes and operate
within their respective scopes.
It's part of the scope of these proposals addressing topics like:
- Security measures to combat malicious relays and attacks against the
Tor network like DDoS
- Expectations for relays operators and operational policies
- Sustainability and operators incentivisation
- Guidelines for conducting investigations to identify and remove
malicious actors from the Tor network
- Initiatives related to relay operator governance and community
building
There might be corner cases where proposals impacting the relay operator
community would contain torspec material if approved. In that case it is
fine to submit a proposal within this community proposal process first
and a corresponding torspec on later one if the proposal got approved.
## How new proposals get added, approved and implemented
The process of adding, approving, and implementing new proposals for the
relay operator community follows a specific workflow as described below.
Here is an overview of the steps involved:
Summary of the stages:
Draft & Full Proposal -> Policy -> Implementation
The current proposal editors are the Tor Project Community and Network
Health Team leads, who can reject or accept full proposals. The criteria
for evaluation of proposals for relay operators are stated on the
document ["Combating Malicious Relays - Evaluation criteria for
solutions"](https://nc.torproject.net/s/bLWAjC8FJ8KKCGQ).
### 1. Draft, consensus, and full proposal
To submit a proposal, open directly a new issue in the Tor Project
GitLab [Community/Policies
repository](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/policies).
A proposal should have a properly formatted (see below) draft. Once an
idea moves to this stage, the Tor Community should discuss and improve
it until we've reached consensus that it's a good idea and that it's
detailed enough to implement.
The official request for changes, suggestions and improvements of the
proposal must happen in the GitLab comment section so that the author
can directly receive the feedback.
To submit a new update of the proposal, the author should add a comment
with the new alternative text in the appropriate ticket. Additionally,
the author must update the issue description to indicate the
availability of a new version of the proposal. This ensures that the
proposal is properly documented.
### 2. Policy and implementation
Once the full proposal has reached a consensus and its final version was
approved by the proposal editors, they will officially create a merge
request and add the approved proposal. When this happens, we incorporate
it into the Relay Operator policies directory and implement the
proposal.
This process ensures that proposals undergo thorough discussion and
consensus-building, helping maintain the integrity of The Tor Project's
policies and operations.
## Observations
Unli
