[metrics-team] Bringing back Tor Weather - volunteering developer

[Eran Sandler]

On Thu, 2018-07-12 at 20:33 +0000, nusenu wrote:
> Hi, 
> 
> as you have probably already heard we have a motivated relay operator
> and developer (Eran in CC) who would like to help with bringing back
> Tor Weather (among other things)
> - which has previously been discontinued due to missing
> maintainership.
> 
> For this reason I also specifically asked him if he would like to
> maintain this on the long run
> and he is open for that as well - but I'll let him speak for himself.

As Nusenu said, I am open to helping maintain the system.

> 
> Historically the Tor Weather service has been part of the metrics
> team and last year I spotted
> it on your roadmap, so I think it is best to coordinate the efforts
> to avoid
> duplication of work and the efficient use of developer resources.
> 
> Unlike other metrics services the Weather service is somewhat special
> since it (probably) handles non-public subscriber
> data, that - I would assume - the tor project should protect against
> unauthorized access.
> I can also envision a solution to this problem by only using
> ContactInfo data,
> which would create a very strong incentive to actually set a proper
> string there.

I agree with Nusenu that there might be a way to create another system
that can validate ownership via the ContactInfo that Tor Weather can be
based upon and can remove the need to perform the validation as it was
before - which means anyone can register to listen to a certain node
via its fingerprint.

I believe a system that can be based on upon the node's fingerprint +
emailing a verification link to the email listed in the contactinfo
would be a very good way to prove access to the node and that might be
used for a few different things as well (I can talk about that later as
well).

Some of the improvements I was also thinking about was to enable a way
to get alerts on the Tor version running as well. I know it will help
me and other to upgrade even if we missed the regular notifications on
the mailing list.




> 
> Colin also mentioned that he was already in contact with you about
> the Tor Weather topic.
> 
> relevant ticket:
> https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26124
> 


Anyway, I would be happy to connect and discuss this further.

Thanks,
Eran
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