[metrics-bugs] #33649 [Metrics/Consensus Health]: Show progress towards flags on consensus health

[Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki]

#33649: Show progress towards flags on consensus health
--------------------------------------+---------------------
 Reporter:  teor                      |          Owner:  tom
     Type:  enhancement               |         Status:  new
 Priority:  Medium                    |      Milestone:
Component:  Metrics/Consensus Health  |        Version:
 Severity:  Normal                    |     Resolution:
 Keywords:  network-health            |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:                            |         Points:
 Reviewer:                            |        Sponsor:
--------------------------------------+---------------------

Comment (by arma):

 Replying to [comment:1 teor]:
 > As an alternative implementation, we could change tor so it:
 > * calculates a progress fraction towards each flag, for each relay
 > * puts the fractions for each flag in a line in its votes

 My slight preference would be toward publishing the raw input numbers in
 the votes, and doing the calculations externally.

 The calculations get complex when we consider that we'll change the
 threshold algorithms in various versions of Tor, and some dir auths change
 their torrc to set their own custom thresholds (e.g. moria1 sets
 "MinUptimeHidServDirectoryV2 24 hours"). I guess the external script will
 need to keep a growing list of "for this Tor version, this is how you
 combine those raw numbers into the fraction" algorithms.

 The thing that pushes me over the edge toward "do the calculations
 externally" is: what if we have bugs in the fraction calculations? If we
 only publish fraction calculations in votes, then when we discover bugs,
 we potentially invalid all published numbers so far. Whereas if we do the
 calculations externally, we still have the raw numbers and we can rerun
 new scripts over old numbers and get new results.

--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/33649#comment:4>
Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki <https://trac.torproject.org/>
The Tor Project: anonymity online