Re: invitation to directory server operators

[Roger Dingledine <arma@xxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 11:39:48PM -0500, Scott Bennett wrote:
>      A note to Karsten Loesing:  what to do you think about the response
> so far?  Is it enough yet to get you to call off your dogs for a while
> on that proposal until we see how many more directory server operators
> will volunteer to offer hidden service directory services?  We are already
> well above the six-server danger zone.

I think you're confused about the role of defaults, Scott. Anything that
we want to have enabled throughout most of the network should be on
by default. We should assume that the vast majority of people who run
relays don't follow or-talk.

The reason "hsdir" hadn't been on by defauly yet was because we were still
(slowly) working on stability and edge cases like the one Andrew produced.

Now that it's on by default, I expect to see the numbers slowly climbing,
especially first among the folks who update from svn nightly.

I should also clarify that the hsdir flag is only for Karsten's v2 hidden
service design (see e.g. proposal 114). All hidden services still publish
the old v0 way too, and all clients still fetch the old v0 way too.

On a much more theoretical note, this "choose a good default" discussion
reminds me of Section 4 of
http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#usability:weis2006

--Roger