Community Team monthly report - October 2022
Localization
Emmapeel is working on the migration from the translation service
Transifex to Weblate. However, because some translation-sponsored work
is ongoing, some projects will still be translated on Transifex until
the end of the sponsor contract.
You can find the Weblate migration issues in Gitlab:
<Issues · The Tor Project / Community / L10n · GitLab.
Translations stats (October 2022):
- new strings translated: 13959
- strings reviewed: 8944
- edited strings: 16362
User support and documentation
In October, the Community team dedicated a lot of time and resources on
helping users from Iran and providing user feedback to the
Anti-censorship Team. The main issue was snowflake block in Iran:
And as part of Sponsor96, we suggested a small change on Circumvention
map API for China and Hong Kong Tor Browser users:
<Sign in · GitLab.
Frontdesk (email) - Tickets: open: 50, resolved: 766.
Telegram and Signal Support channel (cdr.link) - Tickets resolved: 1475.
For in depth report about Tor user support, please read Nina and Joydeep
monthly reports:
- [tor-project] Joydeep's Monthly Status Report for October 2022
- [tor-project] Nina's Monthly status report for October'22
Tor Browser manual got two new documentation resources:
1. How to use @GetBridgesBot on Telegram:
<https://tb-manual.torproject.org/bridges>\.
2. How to get help from the Tor Project:
<https://tb-manual.torproject.org/support>\.
Onion Services
For Sponsor123, Rhatto and Raya worked on deploying new onion services
and landing pages.
Number of Onion Services deployed: 18 (deployment initiated on October
but finished only on early November).
Number of Onionlaunchpad deployed: 5 landing pages with 2 mirrors each.
Read more about the Onion Services deployment on Rhatto's monthly
report: <https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2022-November/003492.html>\.
For the 2023, Rhatto started the planning and discussion with the Onion
Plan:
<Wiki · The Tor Project / Onion Services / Onion Support · GitLab.
Relay operators community
This month we kicked-off a new sponsored project with the Network Health
team: <Sponsor 112 : Combating Malicious Relays · The Tor Project · GitLab.
The main goal is to improve the network health, by building a trusted
operator community and combating malicious relays. The coordination of
this work is happening during the Network Health weekly meetings on IRC
(#tor-meeting), every Monday at 1600 UTC.
Because of all the protests in Iran, we saw a massive increase in the
network size of snowflake proxies. Although more snowflake standalone
proxies are still needed, in October, we reached a peak of more than
110k snowflake proxies. As part of our outreach campaign, you can
download and print your own Snowflake stickers:
<https://community.torproject.org/static/images/outreach/print/stickers/snowflake/>\.
After a long break, relay operators and the Tor Project met in October
during the Tor Relay Operator Meetup. Meetup notes:
<https://forum.torproject.org/t/tor-relays-invitation-join-us-tor-relay-operator-meetup-october-22-2022-1900-utc/5106/6>\.
SR2 Communications wrote a blog post about running Dynamic Tor bridges
to help users in censored regions to bypass censorship. Read more:
<https://www.sr2.uk/blog/2022/dynamic-bridges/>\.
Trainings and meetups with HRDs
As part of the user feedback cycle and digital security training program
from Sponsor30, the UX and Community teams are planning Tor trainings in
person in the first and second quarter of 2023 (Brasil, Ecuador and
Mexico). This plan should be ready at December.
We also planned some online Tor trainings for November with local
partners in Mexico.
Outreach
- Emmapeel and Joydeep did a AMA with EngageMedia and translators from
South East Asia.
- This month Raya and Nina worked on Tor materials for keeping users
connected during the elections in Kazakhstan #KeepItOn:
<Sign in · GitLab.
- Tor Localization hangout with emmapeel and translators.
- Raya talked about Onion Services and censorship resistance at EBU's
Media Cybersecurity Seminar:
<https://twitter.com/torproject/status/1582763907520733184>\.
- Giorgio Maone talked about Tor at Linux Day 2022 in Palermo, Italy
<https://twitter.com/ma1/status/1583876964233801729>\.
- Cooper from EFF wrote an article about Snowflake:
<Deeplinks Blog | Electronic Frontier Foundation.
- Isabela attended Wired Next Fest 2022 (Italia)
<https://twitter.com/torproject/status/1578760916773982208>\.
- Many articles on press about Tor Snowflake (in German):
<GTZ: Eschborner Fachtage 2006;
<https://www.heise.de/hintergrund/Internetsperren-im-Iran-So-leisten-Sie-mit-Snowflake-Unterstuetzung-7281703.html>
Coming up next
- November 18th - Tor Localization Hangout <https://blog.torproject.org/event/2022-11-18-l10n-hangout/>
- November 19th @ 19 UTC - Tor Relay Operator Meetup:
<https://forum.torproject.org/t/tor-relays-next-tor-relay-operator-november-19th-at-19-00-utc/5544>
- November 29th - Run Snowflake Proxies and Strengthen Internet Freedom (Workshop)
<https://www.digitalrights.community/blog/vpn-village-2022>
- (December) (invite only) Tor Meetup with digital security trainers and
human rights defenders in Latin America
- (December) (invite only) Tor Meetup with digital security trainers and
human rights defenders in East Africa
···
--
The Tor Project
Community Team Lead