[Attempting to move this discussion to tor-dev@ to avoid cross-posting; assuming my Reply-To: header won't get eaten by Mailman..]
On 10/06/14 02:26, Virgil Griffith wrote: > For a while I've been seeking to grow the Tor network in both size and > goodput. Towards this end, I've explored various avenues such as > increasing user-awareness via tor2web. More recently, I've been exploring > financial incentives like TorCoin. > > Not wanting to strictly limit ourselves to financial incentives, I began > reading the literature on incentivizing volunteers. The most relevant > papers I found are: > > * http://www-2.rotman.utoronto.ca/facbios/file/LMS2_ManSci-Paper-Final.pdf > * http://pareto.uab.es/~prey/gneezy_254.pdf > * https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3308162/Slonim%202013.pdf (The last link is a 404.) > The most relevant of these papers (Lacetera 2013) cites the major > motivations for volunteer labor are: "pure altruism, warm glow, self-image, > and reputation". Upon reading this I realized TorCoin's technical > interestingness had blinded me to much easier to leverage motivations of > "warm glow" and "reputation". > > I propose the following system for harnessing "warm glow" and "reputation" > for Tor relay operators. I am willing to fund this in its entirety. > > I propose establishing a subdomain on torproject.org giving each Tor relay > operator (hereafter affectionately called "Torati") his/her own page using > the information her machines provide to the Tor Directory Consensus. The > fields to show on her "Torati profile page" would be things like: > ContactInfo, PGP fingerprint, list of server nicknames, date the Directory > Authorities first saw her contact info, etc. You can also imagine a > receiving special "special recognition stars" for operating an exit or > bridge node. Moreover, some bandwidth measurement like EigenSpeed or > TorCoin gain traction, the Torati page could recognize contributors with by > listing the sum total she has relayed to the Tor network. > > Naturally a node can opt-out of Torati recognition by setting a parameter > in the torrc file. > > I argue this would be a cheap and easy way to motivate operators to > volunteer more bandwidth for the Tor network. As mentioned before, I am > willing to fund this in its entirety. Hi Virgil, adding more/better incentives for people to run relays and bridges sounds like a great plan! What you describe sounds related to what I suggested last December on this list: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-December/005948.html > 9. Provide relay comparison metrics in Onionoo. We could define some > simple metrics on the usefulness of a relay, like provided bandwidth or > uptime, in comparison to other relays. A possible statement from these > metrics could be: "your relay provides more bandwidth than 95% of relays > in the network." Similar to 8. If Atlas [6] or Globe [8] or a > yet-to-be-written Facebook application or a also-yet-to-be-written > Twitter integration into Tor Weather (#10372) tell the world how > successful someone's running Tor relays, maybe that encourages others to > run relays, too. We could even invent a points system for running > relays, with additional points for running exits, if that makes the Tor > network better. Probably needs input from a community coordinator > person. (Orange part in the diagram.) > > [6] https://atlas.torproject.org/ > [8] https://globe.torproject.org/ Want to take a look at Onionoo and see whether it already provides the information and functionality you need, and if not, open tickets for the missing pieces? https://onionoo.torproject.org/ But let me also give you some quick feedback on your proposal: - Why not make it entirely opt-in? We could include a subscription link in Weather's welcome messages that relay operators receive when their relay first receives the Stable flag. - Where does the name "Torati" originate from? All the best, Karsten _______________________________________________ tor-dev mailing list [email protected] https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-dev
