14:00:02 <ggus> #startmeeting Community Team Meeting - 2021-12-13
14:00:02 <MeetBot> Meeting started Mon Dec 13 14:00:02 2021 UTC.  The chair is ggus. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot.
14:00:02 <MeetBot> Useful Commands: #action #agreed #help #info #idea #link #topic.
14:00:08 <ggus> hi everyone!
14:00:09 <championquizzer> hello all o/
14:00:22 <miko[m]> hi championquizzer !
14:00:26 <ggus> Starting now the community team meeting o/
14:00:36 <championquizzer> hello miko[m]
14:00:38 <ggus> here's our meeting pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-community-team-2021-keep
14:00:47 <ggus> please add your updates
14:01:05 <ggus> and then we will discuss our agenda :)
14:02:41 <emmapeel> ggus: when we write 'this week' do we mean the one that just passed, or the next week? i mean, do we write what we plan to do, or what we did?
14:03:22 <ggus> what we plan to do, but feel free to add "last week" too
14:03:23 <championquizzer> i only write the stuff i want to do this week
14:03:33 <emmapeel> i see. thanks
14:03:59 <championquizzer> and if the same thing appears in consecutive weeks i try to add updates
14:04:13 <gaba> last week is what we use in other teams for updates from last week
14:04:17 <gaba> i see you are adding it emmapeel
14:04:28 <emmapeel> yes
14:04:41 <emmapeel> i separated into last and this noe
14:04:46 <emmapeel> *now
14:06:05 <miko[m]> im done too!
14:07:24 <ggus> done
14:08:55 <ggus> looks like people are done, let's start
14:09:04 <emmapeel> im done yes
14:09:06 <ggus> * Russia update
14:09:22 <ggus> Last week Tor was officially blocked in Russia
14:09:43 <ggus> since then we're receiving a lot of user support requests in .ru
14:10:47 <ggus> there are news articles about the ongoing situation in Russia in different languages
14:11:39 <championquizzer> yes! the frontdesk template we created for this issue has been used ~100 times (probably more)
14:11:41 <ggus> you can see how this is impacting users by looking this graph: https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-country.html?start=2021-09-14&end=2021-12-13&country=ru
14:11:51 <emmapeel> ggus: is the connection to Tor blocked, or the website? i mean now
14:12:05 <ggus> emmapeel: both
14:12:33 <ggus> website *.torproject.org block is happening in more ISPs
14:12:36 <emmapeel> damn
14:12:45 * gman999 lurking
14:12:52 <gman999> you mean just in .ru ggus?
14:13:15 <emmapeel> gman999: yes, we are talking about the Russian situation
14:13:17 <ggus> and in some isps, i heard that are located in Moscow, tor connections are blocked and users need a bridge
14:13:40 <gman999> what about .ru relays? what is the situation with those?
14:13:59 <ggus> gman999: some relays are going offline
14:14:13 <ggus> and relays operators are reaching out to us to understand what's happening
14:14:48 <gman999> rough
14:14:57 <ggus> https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#search/country:ru%20type:relay%20running:false%20
14:15:17 <darkk> *.torproject.org is blocked for ~90% of user-facing ISPs, the network is blocked for some smallish number of ISPs. I've not heard any reports but ones coming from some subset of Moscow ISPs & mobile networks.
14:15:20 <ggus> not all of them are offline because of the censorship
14:15:56 <emmapeel> thanks darkk
14:17:02 <ggus> so, last week we published a blog post - https://blog.torproject.org/tor-censorship-in-russia/ and anti-censorship team is doing an awesome work to unblock tor and mitigate this censorship
14:18:14 <ggus> and also last week, we wrote a Rapid Response Fund project for this situation
14:18:32 <ggus> the project will allows us to hire a translator and a part time user support person
14:18:43 <ggus> plus other anti-censorship tasks
14:19:20 <emmapeel> yes!
14:19:22 <ggus> for example, improving our telegram bot for bridges and get some funding for dynamic bridges
14:19:50 <ggus> we didn't hear from this fund yet, but we believe this week we will have an answer from them.
14:20:24 <miko[m]> wow!
14:21:39 <ggus> and you can read more updates about Tor and this situation here: https://twitter.com/torproject/status/1469076697588842498
14:23:02 <ggus> questions? or other thoughts about this topic?
14:23:22 <ggus> we're interviewing today two potential candidates for helping us on user support
14:23:29 <championquizzer> nice!
14:23:36 <ggus> darkk: i will answer your email today
14:23:40 <emmapeel> i would like us to learn from this situation and maybe have a list of steps to take when it happens
14:23:59 <emmapeel> to maybe use when other country does the same
14:24:32 <ggus> yeah, in january we could do a retrospective
14:24:33 <emmapeel> and i think it wuld be nice that we have one place where we can know what is the situation now, how can you help if you are in Russia, if you are not...
14:25:04 <ggus> what to do in a case of fire
14:25:08 <emmapeel> yeah
14:25:56 <emmapeel> maybe also we can create such a document along with the anticensorship team
14:26:07 <championquizzer> +1 to this idea. We also need to put this at multiple places so that it's more accessible (in case of domain blocks)
14:26:47 <championquizzer> have we ever documented incidents like these? maybe on trac at some point in the history?
14:27:41 <ggus> there are tickets and blog posts about censorship in Iran, China...
14:27:44 <ggus> Belarus
14:28:09 <championquizzer> right
14:28:18 <emmapeel> it would be nice if somebody(tm) writes some sort of report
14:28:34 <ggus> ooni is about to publish their report
14:29:01 <emmapeel> oh great
14:29:11 <emmapeel> their reports are exactly what i meant
14:29:15 <ggus> but their tests only covers tor browser built-in bridges, vanilla tor connections, and torproject.org website connectivity
14:29:27 <ggus> it probably won't include how snowflake was blocked
14:30:36 <ggus> alright anything else about Tor censored in Russia?
14:32:10 <gman999> for low-latency purposes for .by and .ru, .lt is ideal location wise...
14:32:27 <gman999> IIRC.. since i looked at this a while ago.
14:32:33 <gman999> just an fyi
14:32:47 <ggus> nice! i didn't know
14:32:56 <gman999> heaving peering b/w .by and .lt
14:33:08 <gman999> most traffic peered that way and not through PL, etc.
14:34:24 <ggus> i will move to the next topic: * Bridges Campaign
14:35:02 <ggus> because of last week situation, we got a lot of new bridges!
14:35:10 <emmapeel> <3
14:35:20 <emmapeel> yeah, translators were the same heh
14:35:44 <ggus> https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#search/type:bridge%20running:true%20first_seen_days:0-6
14:36:03 <championquizzer> awesome
14:36:25 <ggus> great to see the community answering our call! :)
14:36:48 <miko[m]> 391 entries :o
14:36:48 <ggus> our campaign goal was 200 new obfs4 bridges
14:37:12 <ggus> and people deployed in 1 week all these bridges.
14:37:33 <championquizzer> for the length of campaign: https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#search/type:bridge%20running:true%20first_seen_days:0-25
14:38:18 <gman999> great stuff
14:39:08 <ggus> serge is busy these days, gman999
14:39:25 <ggus> we will need to review the campaign rewards asap
14:39:30 <gman999> yes... but not abnormal number of connections tbh
14:39:40 <ggus> and update the blog post
14:40:18 <ggus> as we can't give rewards for all these new operators
14:41:57 <ggus> gman999: let's see if the censorship moves to a country wide tor block
14:42:11 <ggus> then serge will have to deal with 300k users :)
14:42:18 <gman999> ha
14:42:21 <emmapeel> phew
14:42:32 <ggus> we had some spikes in Iran some years ago
14:42:37 <gman999> i track fstat (like lsof)  and netstat
14:42:38 <miko[m]> don't participants need to apply separately to the bridge campaign to be eligible for rewards? or are all these new bridges applying for the rewards?
14:42:50 <gman999> i dump to a file every 3" or so.
14:43:04 <gman999> i can graph that out .. . i have the data since aug
14:43:17 <ggus> miko: they need to apply separately
14:43:26 <ggus> but they are applying on frontdesk@ and on the forum
14:43:32 <championquizzer> and a lot of them have applied
14:43:35 <championquizzer> yes
14:43:41 <gman999> there must be something cheaper to do for all of them
14:43:42 <miko[m]> !!!
14:44:21 <ggus> gman999: yeah, maybe stickers is low cost?
14:44:34 <emmapeel> maybe we could offere free advertisement on torproject page? if they want a link to something
14:44:42 <gman999> how many tshirts as rewards were offered?
14:44:56 <gman999> maybe cover soem of the cost through another grant?
14:45:00 <gman999> just a thought
14:45:34 <miko[m]> socks are neat and smaller just saying xD
14:45:39 <ggus> 10 kits with a hoodie, 20 kits with a tshirt, 10 tshirts for random operators
14:46:03 <gman999> then *something* to the others then...
14:46:34 <gman999> even though nothing was promised
14:46:41 <ggus> right, i will update the ticket before the holiday break
14:46:59 <ggus> https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/relays/-/issues/24
14:47:23 <ggus> we have another topic
14:47:32 <ggus> on our agenda
14:47:41 <ggus> * Outreachy - Review Relay Operator Survey - https://pad.riseup.net/p/c2Tiel6twPpOKFNhTUoZ-keep
14:48:01 <ggus> Miko is working on this survey
14:48:03 <ggus> for relay operators
14:48:23 <ggus> this is part of her internship project
14:48:39 <ggus> https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/relays/-/issues/27
14:49:06 <ggus> miko: do you have a deadline for feedback?
14:49:55 <miko[m]> by the end of this week maybe we could launch the final questionnaire?
14:50:16 <miko[m]> and let it collect responses up to Jan 10
14:50:20 <ggus> sounds good!
14:51:05 <ggus> gman999: if you can share your feedback regarding the questionnaire, that would be helpful
14:51:10 <miko[m]> so i think i have this week to collect feedback from experts here
14:51:24 <gman999> me?  why would anyone care about what i think?
14:51:27 <ggus> nice! i think it's doable!
14:51:35 <gman999> seriously... we need the known unknown ppl
14:51:39 <ggus> gman999: that's a great question! :P
14:51:45 <gman999> lol
14:52:07 <gman999> we've got to engage the new/quiet ops ppl.
14:52:28 <gman999> tpo community as we know it is only a small fraction of the actual community IMHO
14:52:41 <ggus> gman999: i mean, we want your feedback regarding the questions. but you can skip answering the survey.
14:52:46 <gman999> :)
14:52:52 <gman999> lmfao... oops... got it
14:52:53 <gman999> sorry
14:53:04 <ggus> but you can also answer the survey!!!
14:53:10 <ggus> hahah
14:53:18 <miko[m]> hehehe
14:54:10 <gman999> oops!
14:54:25 <miko[m]> please write any concerns wherever you like xD
14:54:45 <miko[m]> or if there's something i have missed do lmk
14:54:58 <gman999> great miko...
14:55:09 <gman999> i'll def have some input, but looks good
14:55:37 <miko[m]> thank you! by all means take your time :D
14:55:56 <gman999> what i'm *really* curious about is operators past experiences running internet accessilbe services...
14:56:03 <gman999> or if a relay is their first
14:56:19 <gman999> since if it's their first then we need more basic sysadmin education
14:56:35 <gman999> ntpd not rdate, single purpose server, etc.
14:56:56 <ggus> good observation
14:57:11 <ggus> gman999: let's follow up on #tor-relays
14:57:24 <gman999> it's been an issue to me for a long long time ...
14:57:28 <gman999> cool.
14:57:34 <ggus> i will need to stop the bot since i have another meeting starting in 2 minutes
14:57:34 <miko[m]> noted!
14:57:43 <gman999> sooo popular ggus
14:57:49 <ggus> thank you miko for working on this!
14:58:07 <ggus> thanks everyone! o/
14:58:08 <ggus> #stopmeeting
14:58:11 <gman999> ty ggus
14:58:12 <miko[m]> thank you all for your insights!
14:58:16 <championquizzer> thanks all! o/
14:58:20 <championquizzer> have a great week
14:58:26 * GeKo hands ggus an #endmeeting
14:58:39 <ggus> #endmeeting