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 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.
-Virgil
[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:
(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
- 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
General remarks: * I agree 100% with your Dec 2013 post. * All data I seek to make available in "Torati" is available from Onionoo.
The proposal is to interface to Torati is like ATLAS but keyed by Tor nickname. * However, where Atlas intends primarily to be a reference, Torati aims to be social reputation incentivization for operators. So you'd want Torati to be seen by search engines using the user's nickname, e.g., -- https://torati.torproject.org/TORTverLover * A given nickname's contributions would be the sum across the relays with that nickname.
Which in for "TORTverLover" would sum the stats across: * https://atlas.torproject.org/#details/F2D3093388925780441433897F497797C5062B... * https://atlas.torproject.org/#details/A8541EA02D2BBE97086BC7EF44A67E8FDA0C75...
To answer your questions:
(The last link is a 404.)
Try: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3308162/Iajya%202013.pdf But the most important papers are the first two I linked.
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.
I greatly prefer opt-out over opt-in. Even if a Torati operator is in fact reputation-hungry, I don't want the opt-in mechanic to encourage him/her to be seen as reputation hungry. Moreover, as ATLAS isn't opt-in so I see no reason to deviate from that precedent as this is really just a "reverse-lookup" version of ATLAS.
Where does the name "Torati" originate from?
The name "Torati" is a Tor-ified version of "digerati" or "illuminati". It's meant to convey something along the lines of "Tor Ninja". It's a positive term that one is proud to call oneself. The name was chosen as a component of the reputation social incentive.
-Virgil
On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 1:19 AM, Karsten Loesing karsten@torproject.org wrote:
[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
(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
- 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
Tor2web-talk mailing list Tor2web-talk@lists.tor2web.org http://lists.tor2web.org/listinfo/tor2web-talk
Hi Virgil,
I think a modified atlas that has a better top relay list and plays with various (non-financial) gamification concepts is long due. When you look at BOINC/SETI, it can work well. I agree that by simply interfacing with onionoo (plus probably some aggregation of data), you can generate a nice set of views that "give back warm and fuzzy feelings" and "encourage competition". Diversity should be factored in, something that we already do partly for the Torservers reimbursements.
I guess $someone should just go ahead and implement something. Hosting it on some third party domain doesn't hurt, and if it is great, we can still discuss moving it to something.tpo.org.
On 10/06/14 22:42, Virgil Griffith wrote:
General remarks: * I agree 100% with your Dec 2013 post. * All data I seek to make available in "Torati" is available from Onionoo.
The proposal is to interface to Torati is like ATLAS but keyed by Tor nickname. * However, where Atlas intends primarily to be a reference, Torati aims to be social reputation incentivization for operators. So you'd want Torati to be seen by search engines using the user's nickname, e.g., -- https://torati.torproject.org/TORTverLover * A given nickname's contributions would be the sum across the relays with that nickname.
Which in for "TORTverLover" would sum the stats across:
https://atlas.torproject.org/#details/F2D3093388925780441433897F497797C5062B...
https://atlas.torproject.org/#details/A8541EA02D2BBE97086BC7EF44A67E8FDA0C75...
I like the idea of having a combined page for all relays run by a single person or organization.
I'm less convinced that requiring all relays to use the same nickname for this to work is a good idea. Consider the three relays run by Nos Oignons: marcuse1, marcuse2, ekumen [0]. They wouldn't want to rename their relays only to have a common page on your new service. Also, the concept of naming authorities is about to be phased out [1], so better not build new services that rely on nicknames.
[0] https://nos-oignons.net/Services/index.en.html [1] https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/blob/HEAD:/proposals/235-kill-name...
As an alternative, how about accepting a relay fingerprint and showing combined statistics for all relays in the same relay family? (A positive side-effect would be that people have an incentive to configure relay family settings, which the guy running the two TORTverLover relays did not.) The URL would be:
https://yourservice/F2D3093388925780441433897F497797C5062B0B
Of course, you could allow people to register at your service and pick a better name for their family of relays. You'd simply keep a name-to-fingerprint mapping and use the fingerprint to query Onionoo. And assuming the TORTverLover is the first to register that name, the URL could indeed be:
https://yourservice/TORTverLover
So, it seems you can already build this with Onionoo's current interface. But if you're missing something, please open a ticket!
To answer your questions:
(The last link is a 404.)
Try: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3308162/Iajya%202013.pdf But the most important papers are the first two I linked.
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.
I greatly prefer opt-out over opt-in. Even if a Torati operator is in
fact reputation-hungry, I don't want the opt-in mechanic to encourage him/her to be seen as reputation hungry. Moreover, as ATLAS isn't opt-in so I see no reason to deviate from that precedent as this is really just a "reverse-lookup" version of ATLAS.
True. Maybe drop the idea of opt-out then. The data that relays publish about themselves are public, and relay operators should be aware of that [2].
[2] https://gitweb.torproject.org/tor.git/blob/HEAD:/src/config/torrc.sample.in#...
Where does the name "Torati" originate from?
The name "Torati" is a Tor-ified version of "digerati" or
"illuminati". It's meant to convey something along the lines of "Tor Ninja". It's a positive term that one is proud to call oneself. The name was chosen as a component of the reputation social incentive.
Okay. See Andrew's concerns about avoiding words having "Tor" in them.
All the best, Karsten
On 06/09/2014 08:26 PM, 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.
This is great that you care about growing the Tor network. Thanks for the thoughts.
However, can we please, please stop using Tor in the name of everything? Our trademark lawyers love the business, but we'd rather spend money on developers and improving tor; not defending our name to keep everyone from being confused as to what is the real Tor or not. People, press, and companies are already calling us at Tor thinking we wrote torcoin and have approved it. We did not write torcoin nor do we approve of it (as far as I know).
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".
Perhaps join the EFF's Tor Challenge? https://www.eff.org/torchallenge/ They would love the help.
The "torcoin" idea is SUSPICIOUS (and makes me think of a thousand conspiracy theories). What is "torcoin"? How can I most effectively and systematically completely destroy this idea? The good news is that we don't need it, it's not endorsed by the Tor Project... and it'll never work. The non-financial-incentivizing ideas in your post sound OK... perhaps a bit unnecessary.
Sincerely,
David
On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 12:26 AM, Virgil Griffith i@virgil.gr 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 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.
-Virgil
tor-dev mailing list tor-dev@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-dev
David,
Respectfully, financial incentivization is a much more nuanced issue than "TorCoin is bad".
TorCoin paper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7r4osQgWVqKTHdxTlowUVpsVmJRcjF3Y3dtcTVscFh...
There are two issues to consider, in order.
(1) we wish to engender the creation of additional Tor relays. This is equivalent to the established "volunteer labor" problems studied in social science. See my previous post for links to journal articles on what kinds of incentivization work best in each context
(2) Given (1), financial incentivization is an established technique for encouraging volunteer labor, e.g. http://pareto.uab.es/~prey/gneezy_254.pdf
It's not about "TorCoin", it's about "we want more relays and are examining quantitative social science (particular, blood donations) to provide ideas."
-V
On Wednesday, June 11, 2014, David Stainton dstainton415@gmail.com wrote:
The "torcoin" idea is SUSPICIOUS (and makes me think of a thousand conspiracy theories). What is "torcoin"? How can I most effectively and systematically completely destroy this idea? The good news is that we don't need it, it's not endorsed by the Tor Project... and it'll never work. The non-financial-incentivizing ideas in your post sound OK... perhaps a bit unnecessary.
Sincerely,
David
On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 12:26 AM, Virgil Griffith <i@virgil.gr javascript:;> 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 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.
-Virgil
tor-dev mailing list tor-dev@lists.torproject.org javascript:; https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-dev
Tor2web-talk mailing list Tor2web-talk@lists.tor2web.org javascript:; http://lists.tor2web.org/listinfo/tor2web-talk
Hi,
On 06/10/2014 02:26 AM, Virgil Griffith wrote:
I propose establishing a subdomain on torproject.org http://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.
I like this idea, and I've toyed with similar things in my head before.
A quick technical note - this seems like a perfect usecase for the OnionOO service. You may want to look at the design of the tor-weather-rewrite that is currently being worked on:
- https://github.com/meejah/tor-weather - https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/weather-in-2014
Best, Luke
Am 2014-06-10 02:26, schrieb Virgil Griffith:
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 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 http://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.
-Virgil
That'd be really awesome indeed. Thanks for these thoughts. I love ideas on how to motivate people to run relays.
Even if not applicable here, I'd like to point out one issue with getting paid for running relays. In many laws (in europe at least) it is crucial for relay-operators NOT to recieve any money for running a relay. It's the base why we don't fall under complicated regulations and can work with general laws instead. Just keep in mind, getting paid (for your benefit) for running relays can hurt.
thanks, martin
tor-dev mailing list tor-dev@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-dev
On Mon, Jun 09, 2014 at 05:26:28PM -0700, Virgil Griffith wrote:
I propose the following system for harnessing "warm glow" and "reputation" for Tor relay operators.
Hi Virgil,
I agree with your direction here, and I'd love to see some more work on it.
In fact, the "per relay" page idea is nearly in place -- I think if we add some elements to the atlas and globe pages for relays, to show their total contribution, ranking, etc, we will be a lot closer to your goal.
The overall ranking page idea has gotten lost lately though. We used to have the torstatus pages (e.g. blutmagie), but they've been unmaintained for a long time. Tools like Atlas and Globe don't replace that "public reward" aspect because there's no master page where you can see at a glance who you should be impressed by. Compass is a bit closer, but still not quite it.
So I'd suggest the following next steps: * Figure out what metrics we should use to quantify useful contribution, and make sure Karsten's onionoo can tell them to us. Add entries for them to the atlas/globe pages. * Make some new pages where you can get a list of relays sorted by those metrics.
This is the sort of topic where it would be best to get some excited new people involved, rather than trying to load down e.g. Karsten more.
Also, don't underestimate the difficulty of choosing the right metrics. And also try to avoid the trap where somebody writes something and then disappears and then you realize you wanted a slightly different metric but nobody knows how to modify the code. :)
--Roger